Last week, you might have seen that Patterson Companies, Inc. (NASDAQ:PDCO) released its third-quarter result to the market. The early response was not positive, with shares down 5.9% to US$27.09 in the past week. Patterson Companies reported in line with analyst predictions, delivering revenues of US$1.6b and statutory earnings per share of US$0.52, suggesting the business is executing well and in line with its plan. This is an important time for investors, as they can track a company's performance in its report, look at what experts are forecasting for next year, and see if there has been any change to expectations for the business. So we gathered the latest post-earnings forecasts to see what estimates suggest is in store for next year.

See our latest analysis for Patterson Companies

After the latest results, the eleven analysts covering Patterson Companies are now predicting revenues of US$6.77b in 2025. If met, this would reflect a satisfactory 3.2% improvement in revenue compared to the last 12 months. Statutory per share are forecast to be US$2.19, approximately in line with the last 12 months. Yet prior to the latest earnings, the analysts had been anticipated revenues of US$6.80b and earnings per share (EPS) of US$2.24 in 2025. So it looks like there's been a small decline in overall sentiment after the recent results - there's been no major change to revenue estimates, but the analysts did make a minor downgrade to their earnings per share forecasts.

It might be a surprise to learn that the consensus price target was broadly unchanged at US$30.00, with the analysts clearly implying that the forecast decline in earnings is not expected to have much of an impact on valuation. Fixating on a single price target can be unwise though, since the consensus target is effectively the average of analyst price targets. As a result, some investors like to look at the range of estimates to see if there are any diverging opinions on the company's valuation. There are some variant perceptions on Patterson Companies, with the most bullish analyst valuing it at US$34.00 and the most bearish at US$28.00 per share. With such a narrow range of valuations, the analysts apparently share similar views on what they think the business is worth.

Another way we can view these estimates is in the context of the bigger picture, such as how the forecasts stack up against past performance, and whether forecasts are more or less bullish relative to other companies in the industry. We would highlight that Patterson Companies' revenue growth is expected to slow, with the forecast 2.5% annualised growth rate until the end of 2025 being well below the historical 4.4% p.a. growth over the last five years. By way of comparison, the other companies in this industry with analyst coverage are forecast to grow their revenue at 6.8% 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 Patterson Companies.