Equities Weekly: US Healthcare – Once Defensive, Now Under Pressure
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Chief Investment Office14 May 2025
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US healthcare: Once defensive, now under pressure. The recent US-China trade agreement brought temporary relief to markets, easing immediate fears of a full-blown global trade war. The rollback of selected tariffs and reopening of bilateral talks helped lift risk sentiment, but investor confidence remains tentative. Growth data has softened, with recent payroll, ISM, and productivity prints pointing to a loss of momentum in the US economy. Against this backdrop, equity investors are becoming more selective, with positioning shifting notably across sectors.

Healthcare, long considered a defensive stalwart, is now facing a valuation overhang due to rising political and regulatory risks. The Trump administration has escalated efforts to lower drug and medical costs through aggressive policy action. Measures include price caps on Medicare Part D drugs (i.e., brand name and generic prescription drugs), hospital billing transparency mandates, and proposals to benchmark domestic drug prices against global rates. These moves have raised concerns over margin compression for pharmaceuticals, insurers, and biotech firms.

The US healthcare sector has declined 3.2% MTD (as of 12 May), underperforming the S&P 500 by 8.1 %pts. Pharmaceutical giants and managed care providers led the decline while select biotech names also came under pressure following weak Q1 earnings and FDA scrutiny.

The DBS CIO Office maintains its long-term conviction view on healthcare given secular tailwinds such as shifting demographics. However, the policy overhang in the US warrants a nuancing of tactical calls. Seek opportunities in European healthcare (over other regions) for its resilient earnings growth (F12M growth of +9.4% vs US at +7.7% and AxJ at +4.6%) and lower likelihood of policy headwinds.

Equity fund flows: US Equity Funds extended their longest streak of outflows since 2Q23 as investors grew increasingly cautious amid slowing economic growth and heightened trade policy uncertainty despite ongoing corporate share buybacks averaging over USD20bn daily this earnings season. The rotation away from US equities coincided with sector-specific weakness, notably in healthcare, where Healthcare/Biotechnology Sector Funds saw nearly USD100mn in redemptions amid renewed regulatory scrutiny and drug pricing reforms under the Trump administration. This shift reflects a broader move towards defensive positioning in less policy-exposed sectors and markets outside the US.

Figure 1: US healthcare sector has fallen 3.2% MTD


Source: Bloomberg, DBS as at 12 May 2025


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