It's been a pretty great week for Bayer Aktiengesellschaft (ETR:BAYN) shareholders, with its shares surging 17% to €56.22 in the week since its latest quarterly results. 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. Readers will be glad to know we've aggregated the latest statutory forecasts to see whether the analysts have changed their mind on Bayer after the latest results.
Taking into account the latest results, the consensus forecast from Bayer's 17 analysts is for revenues of €47.0b in 2027. This reflects a reasonable 2.8% improvement in revenue compared to the last 12 months. Bayer is also expected to turn profitable, with statutory earnings of €3.13 per share. In the lead-up to this report, the analysts had been modelling revenues of €47.1b and earnings per share (EPS) of €3.16 in 2027. So it's pretty clear that, although the analysts have updated their estimates, there's been no major change in expectations for the business following the latest results.
Check out our latest analysis for Bayer
There were no changes to revenue or earnings estimates or the price target of €59.31, suggesting that the company has met expectations in its recent result. 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 Bayer analyst has a price target of €70.00 per share, while the most pessimistic values it at €46.00. These price targets show that analysts do have some differing views on the business, but the estimates do not vary enough to suggest to us that some are betting on wild success or utter failure.
These estimates are interesting, but it can be useful to paint some more broad strokes when seeing how forecasts compare, both to the Bayer's past performance and to peers in the same industry. For example, we noticed that Bayer's rate of growth is expected to accelerate meaningfully, with revenues forecast to exhibit 2.2% growth to the end of 2027 on an annualised basis. That is well above its historical decline of 0.7% a year over the past five years. By contrast, our data suggests that other companies (with analyst coverage) in a similar industry are forecast to see their revenue grow 3.9% per year. Although Bayer's revenues are expected to improve, it seems that the analysts are still bearish on the business, forecasting it to grow slower than the broader industry.
The most important thing to take away is that there's been no major change in sentiment, with the analysts reconfirming that the business is performing in line with their previous earnings per share estimates. Fortunately, the analysts also reconfirmed their revenue estimates, suggesting that it's tracking in line with expectations. Although our data does suggest that Bayer's revenue is expected to perform worse than the wider industry. The consensus price target held steady at €59.31, with the latest estimates not enough to have an impact on their price targets.
With that said, the long-term trajectory of the company's earnings is a lot more important than next year. We have forecasts for Bayer going out to 2028, and you can see them free on our platform here.
You can also view our analysis of Bayer's balance sheet, and whether we think Bayer is carrying too much debt, for free on our platform here.
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