And the company has pointed toward increased profitability as it has improved billing and collection practices. All that has been good news for DaVita investors, the shares about tripling over the past 12 months . DaVita is the United States' No. 2 dialysis services provider, trailing only Germany's Fresenius. A person suffering from ESRD typically is treated thrice weekly at one of DaVita's 486 outpatient centers or 285 inpatient hospital locations for rest of the patient's life. When a once-reliable company's shares get crunched, any investor would do well to take a look and decide whether there's potential for a recovery.
Valuation is only part of the investing equation, and too complex to be fully discussed here.
Unfortunately, there's no perfect scientific formula to apply here, either. There are, however, signs that a business is pulling itself together. DaVita has managed all of those. For every step forward that DaVita's shares make, the more the deep-discount valuation opportunity they presented a year ago fades, prompting investors to take the company's competitive positioning and growth opportunities increasingly into account. There's also the matter of recent slowed growth in the company's addressable market as increasing rates of diagnosis and improved early treatments have trimmed the number of new patients slightly.