AMETEK, Inc. (NYSE:AME) came out with its full-year results last week, and we wanted to see how the business is performing and what industry forecasters think of the company following this report. AMETEK reported in line with analyst predictions, delivering revenues of US$6.6b and statutory earnings per share of US$5.67, suggesting the business is executing well and in line with its plan. 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.

View our latest analysis for AMETEK

Taking into account the latest results, the current consensus from AMETEK's 13 analysts is for revenues of US$7.39b in 2024. This would reflect a solid 12% increase on its revenue over the past 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are predicted to increase 5.6% to US$6.01. Before this earnings report, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of US$7.44b and earnings per share (EPS) of US$6.02 in 2024. So it's pretty clear that, although the analysts have updated their estimates, there's been no major change in expectations for the business following the latest results.

The analysts reconfirmed their price target of US$183, showing that the business is executing well and in line with expectations. It could also be instructive to look at the range of analyst estimates, to evaluate how different the outlier opinions are from the mean. The most optimistic AMETEK analyst has a price target of US$209 per share, while the most pessimistic values it at US$165. This is a very narrow spread of estimates, implying either that AMETEK is an easy company to value, or - more likely - the analysts are relying heavily on some key assumptions.

Looking at the bigger picture now, one of the ways we can make sense of these forecasts is to see how they measure up against both past performance and industry growth estimates. It's clear from the latest estimates that AMETEK's rate of growth is expected to accelerate meaningfully, with the forecast 12% annualised revenue growth to the end of 2024 noticeably faster than its historical growth of 6.9% p.a. 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 7.9% per year. It seems obvious that, while the growth outlook is brighter than the recent past, the analysts also expect AMETEK to grow faster than the wider industry.