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It's shaping up to be a tough period for Close Brothers Group plc (LON:CBG), which a week ago released some disappointing yearly results that could have a notable impact on how the market views the stock. It wasn't a great result overall - while revenue fell marginally short of analyst estimates at UK£927m, statutory earnings missed forecasts by an incredible 23%, coming in at just UK£0.59 per share. This is an important time for investors, as they can track a company's performance in its report, look at what experts are forecasting for next year, and see if there has been any change to expectations for the business. So we collected the latest post-earnings statutory consensus estimates to see what could be in store for next year.
See our latest analysis for Close Brothers Group
Following last week's earnings report, Close Brothers Group's ten analysts are forecasting 2025 revenues to be UK£915.4m, approximately in line with the last 12 months. Earnings are expected to tip over into lossmaking territory, with the analysts forecasting statutory losses of -UK£0.51 per share in 2025. Yet prior to the latest earnings, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of UK£940.7m and losses of UK£0.33 per share in 2025. While this year's revenue estimates dropped there was also a sizeable expansion in loss per share expectations, suggesting the consensus has a bit of a mixed view on the stock.
There was no major change to the consensus price target of UK£5.42, signalling that the business is performing roughly in line with expectations, despite lower earnings per share forecasts. 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. There are some variant perceptions on Close Brothers Group, with the most bullish analyst valuing it at UK£6.20 and the most bearish at UK£4.60 per share. Even so, with a relatively close grouping of estimates, it looks like the analysts are quite confident in their valuations, suggesting Close Brothers Group 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. These estimates imply that revenue is expected to slow, with a forecast annualised decline of 1.2% by the end of 2025. This indicates a significant reduction from annual growth of 2.3% over the last five years. By contrast, our data suggests that other companies (with analyst coverage) in the same industry are forecast to see their revenue grow 3.7% annually for the foreseeable future. It's pretty clear that Close Brothers Group's revenues are expected to perform substantially worse than the wider industry.