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Shareholders might have noticed that Whitehaven Coal Limited (ASX:WHC) filed its half-year result this time last week. The early response was not positive, with shares down 4.7% to AU$7.13 in the past week. It looks like a pretty bad result, all things considered. Although revenues of AU$1.6b were in line with analyst predictions, statutory earnings fell badly short, missing estimates by 37% to hit AU$0.32 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.
View our latest analysis for Whitehaven Coal
Taking into account the latest results, the current consensus from Whitehaven Coal's ten analysts is for revenues of AU$4.17b in 2024. This would reflect a solid 8.4% increase on its revenue over the past 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are forecast to plunge 31% to AU$0.95 in the same period. Before this earnings report, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of AU$4.26b and earnings per share (EPS) of AU$1.04 in 2024. It's pretty clear that pessimism has reared its head after the latest results, leading to a weaker revenue outlook and a small dip in earnings per share estimates.
The analysts made no major changes to their price target of AU$8.22, suggesting the downgrades are not expected to have a long-term impact on Whitehaven Coal'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 Whitehaven Coal, with the most bullish analyst valuing it at AU$11.40 and the most bearish at AU$6.00 per share. This is a fairly broad spread of estimates, suggesting that analysts are forecasting a wide range of possible outcomes for the business.
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. We would highlight that Whitehaven Coal's revenue growth is expected to slow, with the forecast 18% annualised growth rate until the end of 2024 being well below the historical 27% p.a. growth over the last five years. Juxtapose this against the other companies in the industry with analyst coverage, which are forecast to grow their revenues (in aggregate) 0.2% per year. So it's pretty clear that, while Whitehaven Coal's revenue growth is expected to slow, it's still expected to grow faster than the industry itself.