In December 2017, Chart Industries Inc (NASDAQ:GTLS) released its most recent earnings update. Generally, it seems that analyst forecasts are substantially optimistic, with earnings expected to grow by a high double-digit of 92.08% in the upcoming year, compared with the past 5-year average growth rate of -25.37%. Presently, with earnings at US$28.00M, we should see this growing to US$53.78M by 2019. Below is a brief commentary around Chart Industries’s earnings outlook going forward, which may give you a sense of market sentiment for the company. For those interested in more of an analysis of the company, you can research its fundamentals here. See our latest analysis for Chart Industries

Can we expect Chart Industries to keep growing?

Over the next three years, it seems the consensus view of the 8 analysts covering GTLS is skewed towards the positive sentiment. Since forecasting becomes more difficult further into the future, broker analysts generally project out to around three years. To reduce the year-on-year volatility of analyst earnings forecast, I’ve inserted a line of best fit through the expected earnings figures to determine the annual growth rate from the slope of the line.

By 2021, GTLS’s earnings should reach US$81.38M, from current levels of US$28.00M, resulting in an annual growth rate of 35.67%. This leads to an EPS of $2.55 in the final year of projections relative to the current EPS of $0.91. Earnings growth appears to be a result of cost cutting activities, as revenues is expected to grow much slower than earnings. In 2021, GTLS’s profit margin will have expanded from 2.83% to 6.04%.

Next Steps:

Future outlook is only one aspect when you’re building an investment case for a stock. For Chart Industries, I’ve put together three pertinent factors you should look at:

1. Financial Health: Does it have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at our free balance sheet analysis with six simple checks on key factors like leverage and risk.

2. Valuation: What is Chart Industries worth today? Is the stock undervalued, even when its growth outlook is factored into its intrinsic value? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether Chart Industries is currently mispriced by the market.

3. Other High-Growth Alternatives : Are there other high-growth stocks you could be holding instead of Chart Industries? Explore our interactive list of stocks with large growth potential to get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing!

To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements.

The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned.