Shareholders in Yanlord Land Group Limited (SGX:Z25) may be thrilled to learn that the analysts have just delivered a major upgrade to their near-term forecasts. The analysts have sharply increased their revenue numbers, with a view that Yanlord Land Group will make substantially more sales than they'd previously expected.

After this upgrade, Yanlord Land Group's dual analysts are now forecasting revenues of CN¥36b in 2023. This would be a substantial 27% improvement in sales compared to the last 12 months. Per-share earnings are expected to jump 52% to CN¥1.21. Before this latest update, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of CN¥32b and earnings per share (EPS) of CN¥1.12 in 2023. Sentiment certainly seems to have improved in recent times, with a decent improvement in revenue and a small increase to earnings per share estimates.

Check out our latest analysis for Yanlord Land Group

Despite these upgrades, the consensus price target fell 15% to S$1.03, perhaps signalling that the uplift in performance is not expected to last. There's another way to think about price targets though, and that's to look at the range of price targets put forward by analysts, because a wide range of estimates could suggest a diverse view on possible outcomes for the business. There are some variant perceptions on Yanlord Land Group, with the most bullish analyst valuing it at S$1.06 and the most bearish at S$1.00 per share. This is a very narrow spread of estimates, implying either that Yanlord Land Group is an easy company to value, or - more likely - the analysts are relying heavily on some key assumptions.

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. It's clear from the latest estimates that Yanlord Land Group's rate of growth is expected to accelerate meaningfully, with the forecast 27% annualised revenue growth to the end of 2023 noticeably faster than its historical growth of 5.8% p.a. over the past five years. Compare this with other companies in the same industry, which are forecast to grow their revenue 2.5% annually. Factoring in the forecast acceleration in revenue, it's pretty clear that Yanlord Land Group is expected to grow much faster than its 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, analysts also upgraded their revenue estimates, and our data indicates sales are expected to perform better than the wider market. Furthermore, there was a cut to the price target, suggesting that the latest news has led to more pessimism about the intrinsic value of the business. Given that analysts appear to be expecting substantial improvement in the sales pipeline, now could be the right time to take another look at Yanlord Land Group.