The investors in Coherent Corp.'s (NYSE:COHR) will be rubbing their hands together with glee today, after the share price leapt 21% to US$76.63 in the week following its yearly results. The statutory results were not great - while revenues of US$4.7b were in line with expectations,Coherent lost US$1.84 a share in the process. Following the result, the analysts have updated their earnings model, and it would be good to know whether they think there's been a strong change in the company's prospects, or if it's business as usual. Readers will be glad to know we've aggregated the latest statutory forecasts to see whether the analysts have changed their mind on Coherent after the latest results.

Taking into account the latest results, the current consensus from Coherent's 15 analysts is for revenues of US$5.43b in 2025. This would reflect a meaningful 15% increase on its revenue over the past 12 months. Earnings are expected to improve, with Coherent forecast to report a statutory profit of US$0.23 per share. In the lead-up to this report, the analysts had been modelling revenues of US$5.44b and earnings per share (EPS) of US$0.45 in 2025. The analysts seem to have become more bearish following the latest results. While there were no changes to revenue forecasts, there was a large cut to EPS estimates.

Despite cutting their earnings forecasts,the analysts have lifted their price target 14% to US$80.63, suggesting that these impacts are not expected to weigh on the stock's value in the long term. The consensus price target is just an average of individual analyst targets, so - it could be handy to see how wide the range of underlying estimates is. The most optimistic Coherent analyst has a price target of US$90.00 per share, while the most pessimistic values it at US$50.00. Analysts definitely have varying views on the business, but the spread of estimates is not wide enough in our view to suggest that extreme outcomes could await Coherent shareholders.

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. We would highlight that Coherent's revenue growth is expected to slow, with the forecast 15% annualised growth rate until the end of 2025 being well below the historical 22% 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 7.4% annually. So it's pretty clear that, while Coherent's revenue growth is expected to slow, it's still expected to grow faster than the industry itself.

The Bottom Line

The most important thing to take away is that the analysts downgraded their earnings per share estimates, showing that there has been a clear decline in sentiment following these results. Fortunately, they also reconfirmed their revenue numbers, suggesting that it's tracking in line with expectations. Additionally, our data suggests that revenue is expected to grow faster than the wider industry. We note an upgrade to the price target, suggesting that the analysts believes the intrinsic value of the business is likely to improve over time.

With that said, the long-term trajectory of the company's earnings is a lot more important than next year. We have estimates - from multiple Coherent analysts - going out to 2027, and you can see them free on our platform here.

You should always think about risks though. Case in point, we've spotted 1 warning sign for Coherent you should be aware of.

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