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Celebrations may be in order for Fulgent Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ:FLGT) shareholders, with the analysts delivering a significant upgrade to their statutory estimates for the company. The consensus statutory numbers for both revenue and earnings per share (EPS) increased, with their view clearly much more bullish on the company's business prospects. The market may be pricing in some blue sky too, with the share price gaining 97% to US$138 in the last 7 days. We'll be curious to see if these new estimates convince the market to lift the stock price higher still.
After the upgrade, the four analysts covering Fulgent Genetics are now predicting revenues of US$523m in 2021. If met, this would reflect a major 287% improvement in sales compared to the last 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are presumed to surge 348% to US$10.04. Before this latest update, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of US$369m and earnings per share (EPS) of US$6.16 in 2021. So we can see there's been a pretty clear increase in analyst sentiment in recent times, with both revenues and earnings per share receiving a decent lift in the latest estimates.
Check out our latest analysis for Fulgent Genetics
It will come as no surprise to learn that the analysts have increased their price target for Fulgent Genetics 26% to US$90.00 on the back of these upgrades. Fixating on a single price target can be unwise though, since the consensus target is effectively the average of analyst price targets. As a result, some investors like to look at the range of estimates to see if there are any diverging opinions on the company's valuation. Currently, the most bullish analyst values Fulgent Genetics at US$130 per share, while the most bearish prices it at US$40.00. This is a fairly broad spread of estimates, suggesting that the analysts are forecasting a wide range of possible outcomes for the business.
Taking a look at the bigger picture now, one of the ways we can understand these forecasts is to see how they compare to both past performance and industry growth estimates. The analysts are definitely expecting Fulgent Genetics' growth to accelerate, with the forecast 287% growth ranking favourably alongside historical growth of 40% per annum over the past five years. By contrast, our data suggests that other companies (with analyst coverage) in a similar industry are forecast to grow their revenue at 7.2% per year. It seems obvious that, while the growth outlook is brighter than the recent past, the analysts also expect Fulgent Genetics to grow faster than the wider industry.