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It's been a good week for Campbell Soup Company (NYSE:CPB) shareholders, because the company has just released its latest quarterly results, and the shares gained 2.9% to US$47.96. It was a credible result overall, with revenues of US$2.3b and statutory earnings per share of US$0.80 both in line with analyst estimates, showing that Campbell Soup is executing in line with expectations. 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.
Check out our latest analysis for Campbell Soup
Taking into account the latest results, the current consensus, from the 14 analysts covering Campbell Soup, is for revenues of US$8.43b in 2021, which would reflect a discernible 5.9% reduction in Campbell Soup's sales over the past 12 months. Per-share earnings are expected to increase 9.4% to US$2.91. Yet prior to the latest earnings, the analysts had been anticipated revenues of US$8.40b and earnings per share (EPS) of US$2.89 in 2021. So it's pretty clear that, although the analysts have updated their estimates, there's been no major change in expectations for the business following the latest results.
There were no changes to revenue or earnings estimates or the price target of US$50.34, suggesting that the company has met expectations in its recent result. The consensus price target is just an average of individual analyst targets, so - it could be handy to see how wide the range of underlying estimates is. The most optimistic Campbell Soup analyst has a price target of US$59.00 per share, while the most pessimistic values it at US$40.00. These price targets show that analysts do have some differing views on the business, but the estimates do not vary enough to suggest to us that some are betting on wild success or utter failure.
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. These estimates imply that sales are expected to slow, with a forecast annualised revenue decline of 12% by the end of 2021. 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 3.1% annually for the foreseeable future. It's pretty clear that Campbell Soup's revenues are expected to perform substantially worse than the wider industry.