Industry Analysts Just Made A Notable Upgrade To Their NorthWestern Corporation (NASDAQ:NWE) Revenue Forecasts

NorthWestern Corporation (NASDAQ:NWE) shareholders will have a reason to smile today, with the analysts making substantial upgrades to this year's forecasts. The analysts have sharply increased their revenue numbers, with a view that NorthWestern will make substantially more sales than they'd previously expected.

Following the upgrade, the current consensus from NorthWestern's six analysts is for revenues of US$1.6b in 2023 which - if met - would reflect a decent 9.8% increase on its sales over the past 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are presumed to expand 13% to US$3.47. Prior to this update, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of US$1.5b and earnings per share (EPS) of US$3.49 in 2023. There's clearly been a surge in bullishness around the company's sales pipeline, even if there's no real change in earnings per share forecasts.

Check out our latest analysis for NorthWestern

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. It's clear from the latest estimates that NorthWestern's rate of growth is expected to accelerate meaningfully, with the forecast 9.8% annualised revenue growth to the end of 2023 noticeably faster than its historical growth of 2.7% 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 0.8% per year. It seems obvious that, while the growth outlook is brighter than the recent past, the analysts also expect NorthWestern to grow faster than the wider industry.

The Bottom Line

The most important thing to take away is that there's been no major change in sentiment, with analysts reconfirming that earnings per share are expected to continue performing in line with their prior expectations. Fortunately, analysts also upgraded their revenue estimates, and our data indicates sales are expected to perform better than the wider market. Given that analysts appear to be expecting substantial improvement in the sales pipeline, now could be the right time to take another look at NorthWestern.

Analysts are clearly in love with NorthWestern at the moment, but before diving in - you should be aware that we've identified some warning flags with the business, such as dilutive stock issuance over the past year. For more information, you can click through to our platform to learn more about this and the 2 other flags we've identified .

Another way to search for interesting companies that could be reaching an inflection point is to track whether management are buying or selling, with our free list of growing companies 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.