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Woodside Petroleum Ltd (ASX:WPL): What Are The Future Prospects?

In December 2017, Woodside Petroleum Ltd (ASX:WPL) announced its latest earnings update. Overall, analysts seem fairly confident, as a 29.05% increase in profits is expected in the upcoming year, relative to the past 5-year average growth rate of -14.67%. With net income at current levels of US$1.02B, we should see this rise to US$1.32B in 2019. Below is a brief commentary on the longer term outlook the market has for Woodside Petroleum. Readers that are interested in understanding the company beyond these figures should research its fundamentals here. See our latest analysis for Woodside Petroleum

Can we expect Woodside Petroleum to keep growing?

The longer term view from the 13 analysts covering WPL is one of positive sentiment. Given that it becomes hard to forecast far into the future, broker analysts tend to project ahead roughly three years. To understand the overall trajectory of WPL’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.

ASX:WPL Future Profit Mar 7th 18
ASX:WPL Future Profit Mar 7th 18

From the current net income level of US$1.02B and the final forecast of US$1.64B by 2021, the annual rate of growth for WPL’s earnings is 13.10%. EPS reaches $1.77 in the final year of forecast compared to the current $1.22 EPS today. Growth in the bottom line seems to suggest cost-cutting initiatives, since top-line is predicted to rise at a slower pace than earnings. In 2021, WPL’s profit margin will have expanded from 26.20% to 31.73%.

Next Steps:

Future outlook is only one aspect when you’re building an investment case for a stock. For Woodside Petroleum, there are three essential factors you should further research:

  1. 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.

  2. Valuation: What is Woodside Petroleum 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 Woodside Petroleum is currently mispriced by the market.

  3. Other High-Growth Alternatives : Are there other high-growth stocks you could be holding instead of Woodside Petroleum? 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.

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