Market forces rained on the parade of Harvard Bioscience, Inc. (NASDAQ:HBIO) shareholders today, when the analysts downgraded their forecasts for this year. Revenue estimates were cut sharply as the analysts signalled a weaker outlook - perhaps a sign that investors should temper their expectations as well.

Following the latest downgrade, the dual analysts covering Harvard Bioscience provided consensus estimates of US$99m revenue in 2024, which would reflect a perceptible 2.5% decline on its sales over the past 12 months. Before the latest update, the analysts were foreseeing US$113m of revenue in 2024. It looks like forecasts have become a fair bit less optimistic on Harvard Bioscience, given the substantial drop in revenue estimates.

See our latest analysis for Harvard Bioscience

Notably, the analysts have cut their price target 11% to US$6.25, suggesting concerns around Harvard Bioscience's valuation.

Taking a look at the bigger picture now, one of the ways we can understand these forecasts is to see how they compare to both past performance and industry growth estimates. Over the past five years, revenues have declined around 0.5% annually. Worse, forecasts are essentially predicting the decline to accelerate, with the estimate for an annualised 4.9% decline in revenue until the end of 2024. By contrast, our data suggests that other companies (with analyst coverage) in a similar industry are forecast to see their revenue grow 6.7% per year. So while a broad number of companies are forecast to grow, unfortunately Harvard Bioscience is expected to see its sales affected worse than other companies in the industry.

The Bottom Line

The clear low-light was that analysts slashing their revenue forecasts for Harvard Bioscience this year. They also expect company revenue to perform worse than the wider market. Furthermore, there was a cut to the price target, suggesting that the latest news has led to more pessimism about the intrinsic value of the business. Overall, given the drastic downgrade to this year's forecasts, we'd be feeling a little more wary of Harvard Bioscience going forwards.

Need some more information? At least one of Harvard Bioscience's dual analysts has provided estimates out to 2026, which can be seen for free on our platform here.

Another way to search for interesting companies that could be reaching an inflection point is to track whether management are buying or selling, with our free list of growing companies backed by insiders.

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