Shareholders in World Fuel Services Corporation (NYSE:INT) may be thrilled to learn that the analysts have just delivered a major upgrade to their near-term forecasts. The revenue forecast for this year has experienced a facelift, with the analysts now much more optimistic on its sales pipeline. World Fuel Services has also found favour with investors, with the stock up a worthy 26% to US$27.72 over the past week. It will be interesting to see if today's upgrade is enough to propel the stock even higher.

After this upgrade, World Fuel Services' dual analysts are now forecasting revenues of US$59b in 2022. This would be a sizeable 24% improvement in sales compared to the last 12 months. Per-share earnings are expected to soar 39% to US$1.97. Previously, the analysts had been modelling revenues of US$49b and earnings per share (EPS) of US$1.90 in 2022. Sentiment certainly seems to have improved in recent times, with a very substantial lift in revenue and a small lift in earnings per share estimates.

Check out our latest analysis for World Fuel Services

Looking at the bigger picture now, one of the ways we can make sense of these forecasts is to see how they measure up against both past performance and industry growth estimates. One thing stands out from these estimates, which is that World Fuel Services is forecast to grow faster in the future than it has in the past, with revenues expected to display 54% annualised growth until the end of 2022. If achieved, this would be a much better result than the 3.1% annual decline over the past five years. Compare this against analyst estimates for the broader industry, which suggest that (in aggregate) industry revenues are expected to decline 5.4% per year. So it's pretty clear that World Fuel Services is expected to grow faster than the wider industry.

The Bottom Line

The most important thing to take away from this upgrade is that analysts upgraded their earnings per share estimates for this year, expecting improving business conditions. Fortunately, they also upgraded their revenue estimates, and our data indicates sales are expected to perform better than the wider market. Seeing the dramatic upgrade to this year's forecasts, it might be time to take another look at World Fuel Services.

Even so, the longer term trajectory of the business is much more important for the value creation of shareholders. We have analyst estimates for World Fuel Services going out as far as 2024, and you can see them free on our platform here.

Of course, seeing company management invest large sums of money in a stock can be just as useful as knowing whether analysts are upgrading their estimates. So you may also wish to search this free list of stocks that insiders are buying.