Funko, Inc. (NASDAQ:FNKO) shareholders will have a reason to smile today, with the analysts making substantial upgrades to this year's statutory forecasts. Consensus estimates suggest investors could expect greatly increased statutory revenues and earnings per share, with analysts modelling a real improvement in business performance. Funko has also found favour with investors, with the stock up a whopping 32% to US$17.77 over the past week. We'll be curious to see if these new estimates convince the market to lift the stock price higher still.

Following the upgrade, the most recent consensus for Funko from its nine analysts is for revenues of US$812m in 2021 which, if met, would be a major 24% increase on its sales over the past 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are presumed to soar 565% to US$0.75. Previously, the analysts had been modelling revenues of US$721m and earnings per share (EPS) of US$0.41 in 2021. There has definitely been an improvement in perception recently, with the analysts substantially increasing both their earnings and revenue estimates.

See our latest analysis for Funko

With these upgrades, we're not surprised to see that the analysts have lifted their price target 58% to US$14.09 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. There are some variant perceptions on Funko, with the most bullish analyst valuing it at US$22.00 and the most bearish at US$5.00 per share. So we wouldn't be assigning too much credibility to analyst price targets in this case, because there are clearly some widely differing views on what kind of performance this business can generate. 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.

Another way we can view these estimates is in the context of the bigger picture, such as how the forecasts stack up against past performance, and whether forecasts are more or less bullish relative to other companies in the industry. It's clear from the latest estimates that Funko's rate of growth is expected to accelerate meaningfully, with the forecast 24% annualised revenue growth to the end of 2021 noticeably faster than its historical growth of 15% p.a. over the past five years. Compare this with other companies in the same industry, which are forecast to grow their revenue 5.1% annually. It seems obvious that, while the growth outlook is brighter than the recent past, the analysts also expect Funko to grow faster than the wider industry.