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Kontoor Brands, Inc. (NYSE:KTB) 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 Kontoor Brands will make substantially more sales than they'd previously expected. The market may be pricing in some blue sky too, with the share price gaining 14% to US$73.66 in the last 7 days. We'll be curious to see if these new estimates convince the market to lift the stock price higher still.
Following the upgrade, the most recent consensus for Kontoor Brands from its three analysts is for revenues of US$3.0b in 2025 which, if met, would be a decent 17% increase on its sales over the past 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are presumed to grow 15% to US$4.75. Prior to this update, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of US$2.6b and earnings per share (EPS) of US$4.77 in 2025. 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 Kontoor Brands
Even though revenue forecasts increased, there was no change to the consensus price target of US$74.40, suggesting the analysts are focused on earnings as the driver of value creation.
Of course, another way to look at these forecasts is to place them into context against the industry itself. It's clear from the latest estimates that Kontoor Brands' rate of growth is expected to accelerate meaningfully, with the forecast 23% annualised revenue growth to the end of 2025 noticeably faster than its historical growth of 3.7% 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 5.4% per year. Factoring in the forecast acceleration in revenue, it's pretty clear that Kontoor Brands 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. They also upgraded their revenue estimates for this year, and sales are expected to grow faster 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 Kontoor Brands.