Shareholders in Scorpio Tankers Inc. (NYSE:STNG) may be thrilled to learn that the analysts have just delivered a major upgrade to their near-term forecasts. Consensus estimates suggest investors could expect greatly increased statutory revenues and earnings per share, with the analysts modelling a real improvement in business performance. The market may be pricing in some blue sky too, with the share price gaining 15% to US$24.73 in the last 7 days. It will be interesting to see if today's upgrade is enough to propel the stock even higher.

Following the upgrade, the current consensus from Scorpio Tankers' eleven analysts is for revenues of US$867m in 2022 which - if met - would reflect a substantial 49% increase on its sales over the past 12 months. Losses are expected to turn into profits real soon, with the analysts forecasting US$1.39 in per-share earnings. Previously, the analysts had been modelling revenues of US$747m and earnings per share (EPS) of US$0.38 in 2022. So we can see there's been a pretty clear increase in analyst sentiment in recent times, with both revenues and earnings per share receiving a decent lift in the latest estimates.

View our latest analysis for Scorpio Tankers

With these upgrades, we're not surprised to see that the analysts have lifted their price target 21% to US$28.90 per share. 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. Currently, the most bullish analyst values Scorpio Tankers at US$41.00 per share, while the most bearish prices it at US$10.50. With such a wide range in price targets, the analysts are almost certainly betting on widely diverse outcomes for the underlying business. As a result it might not be possible to derive much meaning from the consensus price target, which is after all just an average of this wide range of estimates.

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. The analysts are definitely expecting Scorpio Tankers' growth to accelerate, with the forecast 71% annualised growth to the end of 2022 ranking favourably alongside historical growth of 7.4% 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 5.0% per year. It seems obvious that, while the growth outlook is brighter than the recent past, the analysts also expect Scorpio Tankers to grow faster than the wider industry.