CVS Health shares rise after Jim Cramer highlights the stock’s earnings turnaround and “huge year” potential

CVS Health shares moved higher after Jim Cramer, the CNBC host who frequently discusses individual stocks, said he was looking for “another huge year” for CVS. The comments circulated alongside market coverage tied to a recent Cramer list of top-performing picks, renewing attention on the pharmacy retailer and healthcare-insurance company as investors weigh what the next phase of the sector will look like.

The rally narrative in the posts centered on CVS’s performance over the past year and into the current year. One account said the stock is up 55% over the past 12 months and 30% year to date, while also pointing to a 12.3% gain during a roughly week-long period in May. It attributed the improved tone to what Cramer described as CVS “recovering under new CEO David Joyner,” arguing that sector worries did not fully materialize in a way that hurt the business.

Cramer’s bullish framing in the coverage also tied the stock’s move to results and guidance. According to the same write-up, CVS reported earnings on May 6 and increased its full-year outlook for profit per share to a range of $7.30 to $7.50, which the post said was above analyst estimates. The account also described the company’s first-quarter performance as revenue of $100.43 billion and an EPS figure of $2.57 (the post did not specify GAAP versus non-GAAP).

Other details in the coverage linked CVS’s operational mix to the quarter’s impact. The post said that CVS owns Aetna, a health insurer, and Caremark, its pharmacy benefit management business, and argued that the earnings beat and raised forecast helped explain the stock’s reaction. A separate related post also described Cramer discussing that quarter and said the shares rose about 7.7% to a three-year high after investors responded to the combination of “a great quarter” and guidance that management “raised… pretty substantially.”

Beyond the single-stock call, the commentary reflected a broader, cyclical view of healthcare stocks. One passage said healthcare was among the best-performing sectors into the end of 2025 and that earlier fears connected to healthcare policy did not play out as expected. In that framing, CVS and other healthcare names were able to gain momentum late in the period and carry it into the next year.

For readers, a quick refresher on what CVS actually sells helps explain why a profit-per-share outlook can matter. CVS operates retail pharmacies and also provides pharmacy benefit management (PBM), which manages prescription drug benefits for plan sponsors, plus it runs an insurance arm through Aetna. When investors talk about “higher-than-expected revenue” and raised full-year profit guidance, they are generally looking for evidence that CVS can stabilize margins across those different parts of the business even when drug pricing, utilization, and payer dynamics shift.

Still, the posts did not provide a full breakdown of the earnings drivers, margin changes, or the reasons behind the guidance increase, nor did they include management’s detailed risk discussion. The coverage also did not confirm whether the share move after Cramer’s remarks was directly caused by the comments themselves, versus overlapping trading activity around the earlier earnings release and normal market rotation.

Investors watching next will likely focus on whether CVS sustains the momentum implied by raised profit-per-share guidance, including any follow-through on margins and utilization. Additional quarter-to-quarter updates, especially any further changes to full-year outlook, will be the clearest confirmation of whether Cramer’s “long-lasting” gains thesis matches the company’s underlying operating trend.

What is not disclosed in the cited posts is equally important. They do not spell out the assumptions behind the forecast range, such as expected trends in medical costs at Aetna, pharmacy benefit economics in Caremark, or planned changes to store footprint, reimbursement terms, and other cost items. Without those specifics in the coverage, it remains unclear which segment is doing the heavy lifting and how sensitive results may be to policy or pricing developments.