St. Vincent Hospital Owner Expects Earnings To Top $3.3 Billion

WORCESTER, MA — The for-profit parent company of Worcester's St. Vincent Hospital — the site of a 301-day nurse strike that ended this month — expects to report more than $3.3 billion in 2021 earnings, according to a new financial filing.

Tenet Health executives were set to appear at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference on Tuesday. Before the event, the company filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission saying that it will "meet or exceed" Wall Street expectations.

"[Tenet] will disclose that although its financial statement close process is not yet fully completed, [Tenet] anticipates its Adjusted EBITDA, excluding any fourth quarter stimulus grant income related to the pandemic, will meet or exceed the current Wall Street consensus estimate, as published by FactSet, of its Adjusted EBITDA for the year ended December 31, 2021, of approximately $3.301 billion," the filing said.

If Tenet ends 2021 at $3.301 billion, that would be a $155 million gain compared to 2020.

Tenet's stock was trading around $72 Tuesday morning, a recent low dating back to mid-December. But over a longer period, the company's stock has soared. Tenet was trading at $14.40 per share in March 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic began. The stock reached a five-year high of $81.69 per share in December.

Apart from St. Vincent Hospital, Tenet also owns the MetroWest Medical Center hospitals: Framingham Union and Leonard Morse in Natick.

The St. Vincent nurses strike ended on Jan. 3 when members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association ratified an agreement with the company that, in general, boosts staffing levels across the facility. The nurses will likely return to work starting on Jan. 22.

According to estimates by the Worcester Business Journal, Tenet spent about $31 million fighting the strike, including more than $4 million paid to keep Worcester police on duty at the picket line.

Clarification: This story has been updated to include more context about the Tuesday SEC filing and how it compares to Tenet's formal year-end earnings report.