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Investors in Basler Aktiengesellschaft (ETR:BSL) had a good week, as its shares rose 5.3% to close at €5.79 following the release of its third-quarter results. Revenues were €44m, and Basler was a dismal 15% short of estimates. 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. We thought readers would find it interesting to see the analysts latest (statutory) post-earnings forecasts for next year.
View our latest analysis for Basler
Taking into account the latest results, the consensus forecast from Basler's five analysts is for revenues of €202.2m in 2025. This reflects a decent 11% improvement in revenue compared to the last 12 months. Earnings are expected to improve, with Basler forecast to report a statutory profit of €0.25 per share. In the lead-up to this report, the analysts had been modelling revenues of €206.9m and earnings per share (EPS) of €0.37 in 2025. From this we can that sentiment has definitely become more bearish after the latest results, leading to lower revenue forecasts and a large cut to earnings per share estimates.
The consensus price target fell 24% to €11.26, with the weaker earnings outlook clearly leading valuation estimates. It could also be instructive to look at the range of analyst estimates, to evaluate how different the outlier opinions are from the mean. Currently, the most bullish analyst values Basler at €18.00 per share, while the most bearish prices it at €6.80. Note the wide gap in analyst price targets? This implies to us that there is a fairly broad range of possible scenarios for the underlying business.
One way to get more context on these forecasts is to look at how they compare to both past performance, and how other companies in the same industry are performing. The analysts are definitely expecting Basler's growth to accelerate, with the forecast 8.6% annualised growth to the end of 2025 ranking favourably alongside historical growth of 5.8% per annum over the past five years. By contrast, our data suggests that other companies (with analyst coverage) in a similar industry are forecast to grow their revenue at 11% per year. It seems obvious that, while the future growth outlook is brighter than the recent past, Basler is expected to grow slower than the wider industry.
The Bottom Line
The most important thing to take away is that the analysts downgraded their earnings per share estimates, showing that there has been a clear decline in sentiment following these results. Unfortunately, they also downgraded their revenue estimates, and our data indicates underperformance compared to the wider industry. Even so, earnings per share are more important to the intrinsic value of the business. The consensus price target fell measurably, with the analysts seemingly not reassured by the latest results, leading to a lower estimate of Basler's future valuation.