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Saputo Inc. (TSE:SAP) came out with its third-quarter results last week, and we wanted to see how the business is performing and what industry forecasters think of the company following this report. The results don't look great, especially considering that the analysts had been forecasting a profit and Saputo delivered a statutory loss of CA$1.22 per share. Revenues of CA$5.0b did beat expectations by 4.6% though. 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. We thought readers would find it interesting to see the analysts latest (statutory) post-earnings forecasts for next year.
Check out our latest analysis for Saputo
Taking into account the latest results, the current consensus from Saputo's nine analysts is for revenues of CA$19.4b in 2026. This would reflect a reasonable 2.8% increase on its revenue over the past 12 months. Saputo is also expected to turn profitable, with statutory earnings of CA$1.83 per share. In the lead-up to this report, the analysts had been modelling revenues of CA$19.2b and earnings per share (EPS) of CA$1.99 in 2026. The analysts seem to have become a little more negative on the business after the latest results, given the minor downgrade to their earnings per share numbers for next year.
The consensus price target held steady at CA$30.55, with the analysts seemingly voting that their lower forecast earnings are not expected to lead to a lower stock price in the foreseeable future. That's not the only conclusion we can draw from this data however, as some investors also like to consider the spread in estimates when evaluating analyst price targets. There are some variant perceptions on Saputo, with the most bullish analyst valuing it at CA$37.00 and the most bearish at CA$25.00 per share. As you can see, analysts are not all in agreement on the stock's future, but the range of estimates is still reasonably narrow, which could suggest that the outcome is not totally unpredictable.
These estimates are interesting, but it can be useful to paint some more broad strokes when seeing how forecasts compare, both to the Saputo's past performance and to peers in the same industry. It's pretty clear that there is an expectation that Saputo's revenue growth will slow down substantially, with revenues to the end of 2026 expected to display 2.2% growth on an annualised basis. This is compared to a historical growth rate of 5.8% over the past five years. By way of comparison, the other companies in this industry with analyst coverage are forecast to grow their revenue at 4.4% per year. So it's pretty clear that, while revenue growth is expected to slow down, the wider industry is also expected to grow faster than Saputo.