How Do Analysts See Lazard Ltd (NYSE:LAZ) Performing In The Next 12 Months?
Since Lazard Ltd (NYSE:LAZ) released its earnings in December 2017, analysts seem extremely confident, with a bottom line expansion of more than 100% in the upcoming year, against the previous 5-year average growth rate of 20.62%. Currently with earnings of US$253.58M, we can expect this to reach US$562.67M by 2019. Below is a brief commentary around Lazard’s earnings outlook going forward, which may give you a sense of market sentiment for the company. Investors wanting to learn more about other aspects of the company should research its fundamentals here. See our latest analysis for Lazard
Can we expect Lazard to keep growing?
Longer term expectations from the 7 analysts covering LAZ’s stock is one of positive sentiment. Since forecasting becomes more difficult further into the future, broker analysts generally project out to around three years. To understand the overall trajectory of LAZ’s earnings growth over these next fews years, I’ve fitted a line through these analyst earnings forecast to determine an annual growth rate from the slope.
This results in an annual growth rate of 28.35% based on the most recent earnings level of US$253.58M to the final forecast of US$681.86M by 2021. This leads to an EPS of $5.21 in the final year of projections relative to the current EPS of $2.09. The primary reason for earnings growth is due to cost cutting activities, as revenues is expected to grow much slower than earnings. Margins is currently sitting at 9.60%, which is expected to expand to 22.74% by 2021.
Next Steps:
Future outlook is only one aspect when you’re building an investment case for a stock. For Lazard, there are three relevant factors you should further research:
Financial Health: Does it have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at our free balance sheet analysis with six simple checks on key factors like leverage and risk.
Valuation: What is Lazard worth today? Is the stock undervalued, even when its growth outlook is factored into its intrinsic value? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether Lazard is currently mispriced by the market.
Other High-Growth Alternatives : Are there other high-growth stocks you could be holding instead of Lazard? Explore our interactive list of stocks with large growth potential to get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing!
To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned.
