Fluidigm Corporation (NASDAQ:FLDM): What Are The Future Prospects?

In March 2018, Fluidigm Corporation (NASDAQ:FLDM) announced its earnings update. Overall, analysts seem cautiously optimistic, with earnings expected to grow by 0.44% in the upcoming year compared with the past 5-year average growth rate of -21.01%. With trailing-twelve-month net income at current levels of -US$56.58m, we should see this rise to -US$56.83m in 2019. Below is a brief commentary on the longer term outlook the market has for Fluidigm. For those interested in more of an analysis of the company, you can research its fundamentals here.

Check out our latest analysis for Fluidigm

Exciting times ahead?

The 3 analysts covering FLDM view its longer term outlook with a positive sentiment. Since forecasting becomes more difficult further into the future, broker analysts generally project out to around three years. To reduce the year-on-year volatility of analyst earnings forecast, I’ve inserted a line of best fit through the expected earnings figures to determine the annual growth rate from the slope of the line.

This results in an annual growth rate of 30.16% based on the most recent earnings level of -US$60.53m to the final forecast of -US$90.95m by 2021. This leads to an EPS of $-0.60 in the final year of projections relative to the current EPS of $-1.84. Growth in earnings appears to be a result of cost cutting activities, as revenues is expected to grow much slower than earnings. In 2021, FLDM’s profit margin will have expanded from -59.38% to -62.44%.

Next Steps:

Future outlook is only one aspect when you’re building an investment case for a stock. For Fluidigm, I’ve put together three important factors you should further research:

1. Financial Health: Does it have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at our free balance sheet analysis with six simple checks on key factors like leverage and risk.
2. Management:Have insiders been ramping up their shares to take advantage of the market’s sentiment for Fluidigm’s future outlook? Check out our management and board analysis with insights on CEO compensation and governance factors.
3. Other High-Growth Alternatives : Are there other high-growth stocks you could be holding instead of Fluidigm? Explore our interactive list of stocks with large growth potential to get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing!

To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.

The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.