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It's been a good week for Ascendis Pharma A/S (NASDAQ:ASND) shareholders, because the company has just released its latest first-quarter results, and the shares gained 4.8% to US$172. The results don't look great, especially considering that statutory losses grew 10% to€1.58 per share. Revenues of €100,954,000 did beat expectations by 6.4%, but it looks like a bit of a cold comfort. Earnings are an important time for investors, as they can track a company's performance, look at what the analysts are forecasting for next year, and see if there's been a change in sentiment towards the company. We thought readers would find it interesting to see the analysts latest (statutory) post-earnings forecasts for next year.
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Taking into account the latest results, the most recent consensus for Ascendis Pharma from 15 analysts is for revenues of €620.9m in 2025. If met, it would imply a huge 68% increase on its revenue over the past 12 months. The loss per share is expected to greatly reduce in the near future, narrowing 25% to €4.26. Before this earnings announcement, the analysts had been modelling revenues of €584.4m and losses of €3.10 per share in 2025. While this year's revenue estimates increased, there was also a considerable increase to loss per share expectations, suggesting the consensus has a bit of a mixed view on the stock.
Check out our latest analysis for Ascendis Pharma
There was no major change to the consensus price target of US$219, with growing revenues seemingly enough to offset the concern of growing losses. There's another way to think about price targets though, and that's to look at the range of price targets put forward by analysts, because a wide range of estimates could suggest a diverse view on possible outcomes for the business. The most optimistic Ascendis Pharma analyst has a price target of US$292 per share, while the most pessimistic values it at US$179. This shows there is still a bit of 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.
Taking a look at the bigger picture now, one of the ways we can understand these forecasts is to see how they compare to both past performance and industry growth estimates. The analysts are definitely expecting Ascendis Pharma's growth to accelerate, with the forecast 100% annualised growth to the end of 2025 ranking favourably alongside historical growth of 69% per annum over the past five years. Compare this with other companies in the same industry, which are forecast to grow their revenue 18% annually. It seems obvious that, while the growth outlook is brighter than the recent past, the analysts also expect Ascendis Pharma to grow faster than the wider industry.