News Flash: Analysts Just Made A Captivating Upgrade To Their EVN AG (VIE:EVN) Forecasts

Celebrations may be in order for EVN AG (VIE:EVN) shareholders, with the analysts delivering a significant upgrade to their statutory estimates for the company. The analysts have sharply increased their revenue numbers, with a view that EVN will make substantially more sales than they'd previously expected. Investor sentiment seems to be improving too, with the share price up 4.7% to €24.75 over the past 7 days. It will be interesting to see if this latest upgrade is enough to kickstart further buying interest in the stock.

Following the upgrade, the most recent consensus for EVN from its dual analysts is for revenues of €3.0b in 2022 which, if met, would be a meaningful 11% increase on its sales over the past 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are supposed to plunge 25% to €1.32 in the same period. Before this latest update, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of €2.5b and earnings per share (EPS) of €1.31 in 2022. It seems analyst sentiment has certainly become more bullish on revenues, even though they haven't changed their view on earnings per share.

Check out our latest analysis for EVN

It may not be a surprise to see that the analysts have reconfirmed their price target of €34.73, implying that the uplift in sales is not expected to greatly contribute to EVN's valuation in the near term. It could also be instructive to look at the range of analyst estimates, to evaluate how different the outlier opinions are from the mean. The most optimistic EVN analyst has a price target of €45.20 per share, while the most pessimistic values it at €27.00. This shows there is still some diversity in estimates, but analysts don't appear to be totally split on the stock as though it might be a success or failure situation.

These estimates are interesting, but it can be useful to paint some more broad strokes when seeing how forecasts compare, both to the EVN's past performance and to peers in the same industry. It's clear from the latest estimates that EVN's rate of growth is expected to accelerate meaningfully, with the forecast 11% annualised revenue growth to the end of 2022 noticeably faster than its historical growth of 2.1% p.a. 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 2.0% per year. Factoring in the forecast acceleration in revenue, it's pretty clear that EVN is expected to grow much faster than its industry.

The Bottom Line

The most obvious conclusion from this consensus update is that there's been no major change in the business' prospects in recent times, with analysts holding earnings per share steady, in line with previous estimates. Fortunately, analysts also upgraded their revenue estimates, and our data indicates sales are expected to perform better than the wider market. Seeing the dramatic upgrade to this year's forecasts, it might be time to take another look at EVN.

Even so, the longer term trajectory of the business is much more important for the value creation of shareholders. We have analyst estimates for EVN going out as far as 2024, and you can see them free on our platform here.

Of course, seeing company management invest large sums of money in a stock can be just as useful as knowing whether analysts are upgrading their estimates. So you may also wish to search this free list of stocks that insiders are buying.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.