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Shareholders in Genel Energy plc (LON:GENL) may be thrilled to learn that the analysts have just delivered a major upgrade to their near-term forecasts. The revenue forecast for this year has experienced a facelift, with the analysts now much more optimistic on its sales pipeline.
Following the upgrade, the latest consensus from Genel Energy's five analysts is for revenues of US$430m in 2022, which would reflect a substantial 28% improvement in sales compared to the last 12 months. Losses are expected to turn into profits real soon, with the analysts forecasting US$0.88 in per-share earnings. Prior to this update, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of US$386m and earnings per share (EPS) of US$0.74 in 2022. 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.
View our latest analysis for Genel Energy
Despite these upgrades, the analysts have not made any major changes to their price target of US$2.54, suggesting that the higher estimates are not likely to have a long term impact on what the stock is worth. 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 Genel Energy at US$2.32 per share, while the most bearish prices it at US$1.82. Even so, with a relatively close grouping of estimates, it looks like the analysts are quite confident in their valuations, suggesting Genel Energy is an easy business to forecast or the underlying assumptions are obvious.
These estimates are interesting, but it can be useful to paint some more broad strokes when seeing how forecasts compare, both to the Genel Energy's past performance and to peers in the same industry. It's clear from the latest estimates that Genel Energy's rate of growth is expected to accelerate meaningfully, with the forecast 28% annualised revenue growth to the end of 2022 noticeably faster than its historical growth of 3.2% p.a. over the past five years. By contrast, our data suggests that other companies (with analyst coverage) in the same industry are forecast to see their revenue shrink 1.5% per year. So it's clear with the acceleration in growth, Genel Energy is expected to grow meaningfully faster than the wider industry.
The Bottom Line
The most important thing to take away from this upgrade is that analysts upgraded their earnings per share estimates for this year, expecting improving business conditions. Fortunately, they also upgraded their revenue estimates, and our data indicates sales are expected to perform better than the wider market. Given that analysts appear to be expecting substantial improvement in the sales pipeline, now could be the right time to take another look at Genel Energy.