It's been a sad week for The a2 Milk Company Limited (NZSE:ATM), who've watched their investment drop 17% to NZ$6.20 in the week since the company reported its yearly result. It looks like the results were a bit of a negative overall. While revenues of NZ$1.7b were in line with analyst predictions, statutory earnings were less than expected, missing estimates by 2.0% to hit NZ$0.23 per share. Earnings are an important time for investors, as they can track a company's performance, look at what the analysts are forecasting for next year, and see if there's been a change in sentiment towards the company. Readers will be glad to know we've aggregated the latest statutory forecasts to see whether the analysts have changed their mind on a2 Milk after the latest results.

View our latest analysis for a2 Milk

Taking into account the latest results, the most recent consensus for a2 Milk from 14 analysts is for revenues of NZ$1.77b in 2025. If met, it would imply a modest 5.9% increase on its revenue over the past 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are predicted to accumulate 6.5% to NZ$0.25. In the lead-up to this report, the analysts had been modelling revenues of NZ$1.81b and earnings per share (EPS) of NZ$0.27 in 2025. It's pretty clear that pessimism has reared its head after the latest results, leading to a weaker revenue outlook and a minor downgrade to earnings per share estimates.

The analysts made no major changes to their price target of NZ$6.96, suggesting the downgrades are not expected to have a long-term impact on a2 Milk's valuation. It could also be instructive to look at the range of analyst estimates, to evaluate how different the outlier opinions are from the mean. The most optimistic a2 Milk analyst has a price target of NZ$8.00 per share, while the most pessimistic values it at NZ$6.30. Still, with such a tight range of estimates, it suggeststhe analysts have a pretty good idea of what they think the company is worth.

These estimates are interesting, but it can be useful to paint some more broad strokes when seeing how forecasts compare, both to the a2 Milk's past performance and to peers in the same industry. The analysts are definitely expecting a2 Milk's growth to accelerate, with the forecast 5.9% annualised growth to the end of 2025 ranking favourably alongside historical growth of 2.2% per annum over the past five years. Compare this with other companies in the same industry, which are forecast to grow their revenue 6.3% annually. Factoring in the forecast acceleration in revenue, it's pretty clear that a2 Milk is expected to grow at about the same rate as the wider industry.