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It's been a good week for Clearway Energy, Inc. (NYSE:CWEN.A) shareholders, because the company has just released its latest third-quarter results, and the shares gained 6.4% to US$25.90. Statutory earnings per share disappointed, coming in -47% short of expectations, at US$0.31. Fortunately revenue performance was a lot stronger at US$486m arriving 18% ahead of predictions. 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. So we gathered the latest post-earnings forecasts to see what estimates suggest is in store for next year.
View our latest analysis for Clearway Energy
Taking into account the latest results, the most recent consensus for Clearway Energy from nine analysts is for revenues of US$1.51b in 2025. If met, it would imply a solid 11% increase on its revenue over the past 12 months. Per-share earnings are expected to surge 44% to US$1.50. Yet prior to the latest earnings, the analysts had been anticipated revenues of US$1.48b and earnings per share (EPS) of US$1.36 in 2025. So it seems there's been a definite increase in optimism about Clearway Energy's future following the latest results, with a solid gain to the earnings per share forecasts in particular.
Despite these upgrades,the analysts have not made any major changes to their price target of US$33.45, suggesting that the higher estimates are not likely to have a long term impact on what the stock is worth. That's not the only conclusion we can draw from this data however, as some investors also like to consider the spread in estimates when evaluating analyst price targets. The most optimistic Clearway Energy analyst has a price target of US$37.00 per share, while the most pessimistic values it at US$30.00. Even so, with a relatively close grouping of estimates, it looks like the analysts are quite confident in their valuations, suggesting Clearway Energy is an easy business to forecast or the the analysts are all using similar assumptions.
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. It's clear from the latest estimates that Clearway Energy's rate of growth is expected to accelerate meaningfully, with the forecast 8.7% annualised revenue growth to the end of 2025 noticeably faster than its historical growth of 4.3% p.a. over the past five years. Compare this with other companies in the same industry, which are forecast to grow their revenue 9.9% annually. Clearway Energy is expected to grow at about the same rate as its industry, so it's not clear that we can draw any conclusions from its growth relative to competitors.