La Jolla Pharmaceutical Company (NASDAQ:LJPC) shareholders will have a reason to smile today, with the analysts making substantial upgrades to next year's statutory forecasts. The consensus estimated revenue numbers rose, with their view now clearly much more bullish on the company's business prospects. La Jolla Pharmaceutical has also found favour with investors, with the stock up an impressive 30% to US$5.35 over the past week. It will be interesting to see if today's upgrade is enough to propel the stock even higher.

Following the upgrade, the latest consensus from La Jolla Pharmaceutical's two analysts is for revenues of US$70m in 2021, which would reflect a major 136% improvement in sales compared to the last 12 months. Losses are predicted to fall substantially, shrinking 72% to US$0.63. Yet before this consensus update, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of US$60m and losses of US$0.81 per share in 2021. We can see there's definitely been a change in sentiment in this update, with the analysts administering a sizeable upgrade to next year's revenue estimates, while at the same time reducing their loss estimates.

See our latest analysis for La Jolla Pharmaceutical

Despite these upgrades, the analysts have not made any major changes to their price target of US$10.92, implying that their latest estimates don't have a long term impact on what they think the stock is worth. There's another way to think about price targets though, and that's to look at the range of price targets put forward by analysts, because a wide range of estimates could suggest a diverse view on possible outcomes for the business. Currently, the most bullish analyst values La Jolla Pharmaceutical at US$20.00 per share, while the most bearish prices it at US$4.75. So we wouldn't be assigning too much credibility to analyst price targets in this case, because there are clearly some widely differing views on what kind of performance this business can generate. With this in mind, we wouldn't rely too heavily on the consensus price target, as it is just an average and analysts clearly have some deeply divergent views on the business.

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. The analysts are definitely expecting La Jolla Pharmaceutical's growth to accelerate, with the forecast 136% growth ranking favourably alongside historical growth of 66% 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 20% per year. Factoring in the forecast acceleration in revenue, it's pretty clear that La Jolla Pharmaceutical is expected to grow much faster than its industry.