Natera, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTRA) just released its quarterly report and things are looking bullish. Revenue crushed expectations at US$440m, beating expectations by 22%. Natera reported a statutory loss of US$0.26 per share, which - although not amazing - was much smaller than the analysts predicted. 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. So we gathered the latest post-earnings forecasts to see what estimates suggest is in store for next year.

See our latest analysis for Natera

After the latest results, the 18 analysts covering Natera are now predicting revenues of US$1.79b in 2025. If met, this would reflect a meaningful 17% improvement in revenue compared to the last 12 months. The loss per share is expected to greatly reduce in the near future, narrowing 20% to US$1.30. Before this earnings announcement, the analysts had been modelling revenues of US$1.71b and losses of US$1.21 per share in 2025. Overall it looks as though the analysts were a bit mixed on the latest consensus updates. Although there was a nice uplift to revenue, the consensus also made a moderate increase in its losses per share forecasts.

It will come as a surprise to learn that the consensus price target rose 18% to US$158, with the analysts clearly more interested in growing revenue, even as losses intensify. 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 Natera, with the most bullish analyst valuing it at US$185 and the most bearish at US$37.00 per share. Note the wide gap in analyst price targets? This implies to us that there is a fairly broad range of possible scenarios for the underlying business.

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. It's pretty clear that there is an expectation that Natera's revenue growth will slow down substantially, with revenues to the end of 2025 expected to display 13% growth on an annualised basis. This is compared to a historical growth rate of 32% over the past five years. Compare this against other companies (with analyst forecasts) in the industry, which are in aggregate expected to see revenue growth of 22% annually. So it's pretty clear that, while revenue growth is expected to slow down, the wider industry is also expected to grow faster than Natera.