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Lindsay Corporation (NYSE:LNN) just released its latest first-quarter report and things are not looking great. It wasn't a great result overall - while revenue fell marginally short of analyst estimates at US$108m, statutory earnings missed forecasts by 13%, coming in at just US$0.65 per share. Following the result, the analysts have updated their earnings model, and it would be good to know whether they think there's been a strong change in the company's prospects, or if it's business as usual. Readers will be glad to know we've aggregated the latest statutory forecasts to see whether the analysts have changed their mind on Lindsay after the latest results.
Check out our latest analysis for Lindsay
Taking into account the latest results, the consensus forecast from Lindsay's three analysts is for revenues of US$485.3m in 2021, which would reflect a credible 2.4% improvement in sales compared to the last 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are expected to decline 11% to US$3.07 in the same period. Before this earnings report, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of US$478.7m and earnings per share (EPS) of US$3.01 in 2021. So the consensus seems to have become somewhat more optimistic on Lindsay's earnings potential following these results.
There's been no major changes to the consensus price target of US$140, suggesting that the improved earnings per share outlook is not enough to have a long-term positive impact on the stock's valuation. 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. There are some variant perceptions on Lindsay, with the most bullish analyst valuing it at US$145 and the most bearish at US$135 per share. This is a very narrow spread of estimates, implying either that Lindsay 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. One thing stands out from these estimates, which is that Lindsay is forecast to grow faster in the future than it has in the past, with revenues expected to grow 2.4%. If achieved, this would be a much better result than the 3.2% annual decline over the past five years. By contrast, our data suggests that other companies (with analyst coverage) in a similar industry are forecast to see their revenue grow 7.0% per year. Although Lindsay's revenues are expected to improve, it seems that the analysts are still bearish on the business, forecasting it to grow slower than the wider industry.