Last week, you might have seen that OPENLANE, Inc. (NYSE:KAR) released its quarterly result to the market. The early response was not positive, with shares down 3.4% to US$17.00 in the past week. Results were overall in line with expectations, with the company breaking even at the statutory earnings per share (EPS) level on US$432m in revenue. This is an important time for investors, as they can track a company's performance in its report, look at what experts are forecasting for next year, and see if there has been any change to expectations for the business. We thought readers would find it interesting to see the analysts latest (statutory) post-earnings forecasts for next year.

View our latest analysis for OPENLANE

After the latest results, the seven analysts covering OPENLANE are now predicting revenues of US$1.69b in 2024. If met, this would reflect an okay 2.2% improvement in revenue compared to the last 12 months. Per-share earnings are expected to jump 403% to US$0.43. In the lead-up to this report, the analysts had been modelling revenues of US$1.68b and earnings per share (EPS) of US$0.36 in 2024. Although the revenue estimates have not really changed, we can see there's been a substantial gain in earnings per share expectations, suggesting that the analysts have become more bullish after the latest result.

The consensus price target was unchanged at US$19.83, implying that the improved earnings outlook is not expected to have a long term impact on value creation for shareholders. That's not the only conclusion we can draw from this data however, as some investors also like to consider the spread in estimates when evaluating analyst price targets. There are some variant perceptions on OPENLANE, with the most bullish analyst valuing it at US$25.00 and the most bearish at US$17.00 per share. There are definitely some different views on the stock, but the range of estimates is not wide enough as to imply that the situation is unforecastable, in our view.

One way to get more context on these forecasts is to look at how they compare to both past performance, and how other companies in the same industry are performing. For example, we noticed that OPENLANE's rate of growth is expected to accelerate meaningfully, with revenues forecast to exhibit 4.5% growth to the end of 2024 on an annualised basis. That is well above its historical decline of 12% a year 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 6.6% per year. So although OPENLANE's revenue growth is expected to improve, it is still expected to grow slower than the industry.