Above 80% gross margin, and why health insurers are on the list
71 companies with revenue above $1bn report a gross margin above 80%.
Most of the list is what you would expect. Software costs almost nothing to copy, so a licence sold is close to pure gross profit. Branded pharmaceuticals carry their cost in research that was expensed years earlier, not in the manufacture of the pill.
The unexpected members are health insurers, and they are the reason this page exists. An insurer does not present a cost of revenue line: its principal cost is medical claims, which sits below the line an industrial company would call cost of sales. With little or nothing tagged as cost of revenue, the arithmetic produces a gross margin near 100% for a business whose net margin is in the low single digits.
This is not an error in the filing, and it is not an error here either. It is what happens when one ratio is applied across industries that structure their income statements differently. Gross margin is a sharp tool within an industry and a blunt one across industries.
The general lesson applies well beyond insurers: before comparing a ratio between two companies, check that both of them report the same things in the same places.
What this is usually called
Gross margin is also written as gross profit margin or gross profit ratio, and in a filing the inputs are revenue and cost of revenue -- what older statements call cost of goods sold or COGS. A high-gross-margin business is not the same as a high-net-margin one: the first says the product is cheap to deliver, the second says the whole company is cheap to run. Health insurers show the difference at its most extreme.
The question, as a query
The table is generated by running this against the filings held today. The syntax is the screener's, so the query is a starting point rather than a result.
gross_margin > 80% AND revenue > 1b| Company | Revenue | Net income | Gross margin | Free cash flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UNH InsurerUNITEDHEALTH GROUP INC | $447.57B | $12.06B | 88.7% | $16.08B |
| METAMeta Platforms, Inc. | $200.97B | $60.46B | 82.0% | $46.11B |
| ELV InsurerElevance Health, Inc. | $199.12B | $5.66B | 89.4% | $3.17B |
| LLYELI LILLY & Co | $65.18B | $20.64B | 83.0% | Unavailable |
| ADBEADOBE INC. | $23.77B | $7.13B | 89.3% | $9.85B |
| CYHCOMMUNITY HEALTH SYSTEMS INC | $12.48B | $509.00M | 85.1% | $208.00M |
| ABNBAirbnb, Inc. | $12.24B | $2.51B | 83.0% | Unavailable |
| VRTXVERTEX PHARMACEUTICALS INC / MA | $12.00B | $3.95B | 86.2% | $3.19B |
| JEF Broker-dealerJefferies Financial Group Inc. | $10.82B | Unavailable | 98.2% | Unavailable |
| CNPCENTERPOINT ENERGY INC | $9.36B | $1.05B | 100.0% | -$2.38B |
| EQTEQT Corp | $8.64B | $2.04B | 82.3% | $2.84B |
| ADSKAutodesk, Inc. | $7.21B | $1.12B | 91.0% | $2.41B |
| FTNTFortinet, Inc. | $6.80B | $1.85B | 80.5% | Unavailable |
| TEAMAtlassian Corp | $6.57B | -$53.83M | 84.8% | $1.32B |
| UHALU-Haul Holding Co /NV/ | $6.04B | $83.13M | 95.9% | -$1.36B |
| MCY InsurerMERCURY GENERAL CORP | $5.99B | $541.09M | 99.7% | Unavailable |
| APPAppLovin Corp | $5.48B | $3.33B | 87.9% | Unavailable |
| ONCBeOne Medicines Ltd. | $5.34B | $286.93M | 87.5% | $941.74M |
| INCYINCYTE CORP | $5.14B | $1.29B | 92.8% | Unavailable |
| CHRDChord Energy Corp | $4.88B | $44.46M | 80.0% | Unavailable |
| PLTRPalantir Technologies Inc. | $4.48B | $1.63B | 82.4% | $2.10B |
| LNTALLIANT ENERGY CORP | $4.36B | $810.00M | 85.7% | Unavailable |
| CCICROWN CASTLE INC. | $4.26B | $444.00M | 97.3% | Unavailable |
| PINSPINTEREST, INC. | $4.22B | $416.86M | 80.1% | $1.25B |
| TNLTravel & Leisure Co. | $4.02B | $230.00M | 93.2% | $523.00M |
| VICIVICI PROPERTIES INC. | $4.01B | $2.78B | 99.3% | Unavailable |
| WTM InsurerWHITE MOUNTAINS INSURANCE GROUP LTD | $3.74B | $1.11B | 95.9% | Unavailable |
| ALNYALNYLAM PHARMACEUTICALS, INC. | $3.71B | $313.75M | 81.8% | $465.38M |
| MTDRMatador Resources Co | $3.70B | $759.22M | 94.4% | Unavailable |
| SOFI BankSoFi Technologies, Inc. | $3.61B | $481.32M | 83.1% | Unavailable |
| UTHRUNITED THERAPEUTICS Corp | $3.18B | $1.33B | 87.9% | $1.04B |
| HUBSHUBSPOT INC | $3.13B | $45.91M | 83.8% | $707.55M |
| RRCRANGE RESOURCES CORP | $3.12B | $658.02M | 94.0% | Unavailable |
| FUNSix Flags Entertainment Corporation/NEW | $3.10B | -$1.60B | 91.3% | Unavailable |
| FFIVF5, INC. | $3.09B | $692.38M | 81.4% | $906.41M |
| NBIXNEUROCRINE BIOSCIENCES INC | $2.86B | $478.60M | 98.2% | $748.70M |
| NTNXNutanix, Inc. | $2.85B | $1.51B | 86.8% | $840.68M |
| PTCPTC INC. | $2.74B | $734.00M | 83.8% | $856.69M |
| MURMURPHY OIL CORP | $2.72B | $104.23M | 100.0% | Unavailable |
| DBXDROPBOX, INC. | $2.52B | $508.40M | 80.1% | $930.80M |
Showing the 40 largest by revenue of 71. Open the full list in the screener.
What this does not show
Gross margin is reported gross profit over reported revenue. Companies that report no cost of revenue are shown at the margin their filing implies, not excluded, because the figure is the filing.
The measures behind this
Gross margin Cost of revenue Net margin
Citing this
SequelSEC, “Above 80% gross margin, and why health insurers are on the list”, 20 September 2026. https://sequelsec.com/findings/gross-margin-above-eighty-percent
Figures are recomputed on every view from SEC filings, so a number quoted from this page should carry the date it was read.