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Sinclair, Inc. (NASDAQ:SBGI) came out with its quarterly results last week, and we wanted to see how the business is performing and what industry forecasters think of the company following this report. It was a pretty bad result overall; while revenues were in line with expectations at US$776m, statutory losses exploded to US$2.30 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. With this in mind, we've gathered the latest statutory forecasts to see what the analysts are expecting for next year.
Following the recent earnings report, the consensus from seven analysts covering Sinclair is for revenues of US$3.20b in 2025. This implies a not inconsiderable 9.3% decline in revenue compared to the last 12 months. Earnings are expected to tip over into lossmaking territory, with the analysts forecasting statutory losses of -US$1.74 per share in 2025. Yet prior to the latest earnings, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of US$3.18b and losses of US$1.76 per share in 2025.
View our latest analysis for Sinclair
As a result there was no major change to the consensus price target of US$16.86, implying that the business is trading roughly in line with expectations despite ongoing losses. 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. Currently, the most bullish analyst values Sinclair at US$29.00 per share, while the most bearish prices it at US$12.00. We would probably assign less value to the analyst forecasts in this situation, because such a wide range of estimates could imply that the future of this business is difficult to value accurately. As a result it might not be a great idea to make decisions based on 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. One thing that stands out from these estimates is that revenues are expected to keep falling until the end of 2025, roughly in line with the historical decline of 15% per annum over the past five years. Compare this against analyst estimates for companies in the broader industry, which suggest that revenues (in aggregate) are expected to grow 2.5% annually. So it's pretty clear that, while it does have declining revenues, the analysts also expect Sinclair to suffer worse than the wider industry.