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A week ago, Northwest Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:NWBI) came out with a strong set of first-quarter numbers that could potentially lead to a re-rate of the stock. It was overall a positive result, with revenues beating expectations by 9.9% to hit US$156m. Northwest Bancshares also reported a statutory profit of US$0.34, which was an impressive 40% above what the analysts had forecast. This is an important time for investors, as they can track a company's performance in its report, look at what experts are forecasting for next year, and see if there has been any change to expectations for the business. So we collected the latest post-earnings statutory consensus estimates to see what could be in store for next year.
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Following the latest results, Northwest Bancshares' six analysts are now forecasting revenues of US$651.3m in 2025. This would be a sizeable 26% improvement in revenue compared to the last 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are predicted to expand 11% to US$1.00. Yet prior to the latest earnings, the analysts had been anticipated revenues of US$647.7m and earnings per share (EPS) of US$0.97 in 2025. The analysts seems to have become more bullish on the business, judging by their new earnings per share estimates.
Check out our latest analysis for Northwest Bancshares
There's been no major changes to the consensus price target of US$13.38, suggesting that the improved earnings per share outlook is not enough to have a long-term positive impact on the stock's valuation. It could also be instructive to look at the range of analyst estimates, to evaluate how different the outlier opinions are from the mean. There are some variant perceptions on Northwest Bancshares, with the most bullish analyst valuing it at US$15.00 and the most bearish at US$12.00 per share. This is a very narrow spread of estimates, implying either that Northwest Bancshares is an easy company to value, or - more likely - the analysts are relying heavily on some key assumptions.
These estimates are interesting, but it can be useful to paint some more broad strokes when seeing how forecasts compare, both to the Northwest Bancshares' past performance and to peers in the same industry. The analysts are definitely expecting Northwest Bancshares' growth to accelerate, with the forecast 36% annualised growth to the end of 2025 ranking favourably alongside historical growth of 2.9% per annum 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 7.1% per year. It seems obvious that, while the growth outlook is brighter than the recent past, the analysts also expect Northwest Bancshares to grow faster than the wider industry.