Yahoo Finance Manulife Financial Corporation (TSE:MFC): What's The Analyst Consensus Outlook?
Manulife Financial Corporation's (TSE:MFC) announced its latest earnings update in December 2018, which showed that the company gained from a major tailwind, more than doubling its earnings from the prior year. Below is my commentary, albeit very simple and high-level, on how market analysts perceive Manulife Financial's earnings growth outlook over the next few years and whether the future looks even brighter than the past. I will be using net income excluding extraordinary items in order to exclude one-off volatility which I am not interested in.
See our latest analysis for Manulife Financial
Analysts' outlook for this coming year seems positive, with earnings growing by a robust 17%. This growth seems to continue into the following year with rates arriving at double digit 28% compared to today’s earnings, and finally hitting CA$6.5b by 2022.
Even though it is helpful to be aware of the rate of growth year by year relative to today’s value, it may be more beneficial estimating the rate at which the earnings are moving every year, on average. The benefit of this technique is that we can get a better picture of the direction of Manulife Financial's earnings trajectory over the long run, irrespective of near term fluctuations, which may be more relevant for long term investors. To compute this rate, I've appended a line of best fit through the forecasted earnings by market analysts. The slope of this line is the rate of earnings growth, which in this case is 11%. This means, we can anticipate Manulife Financial will grow its earnings by 11% every year for the next couple of years.
Next Steps:
For Manulife Financial, there are three pertinent factors you should further examine:
Financial Health: Does it have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at our free balance sheet analysis with six simple checks on key factors like leverage and risk.
Valuation: What is MFC worth today? Is the stock undervalued, even when its growth outlook is factored into its intrinsic value? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether MFC is currently mispriced by the market.
Other High-Growth Alternatives: Are there other high-growth stocks you could be holding instead of MFC? Explore our interactive list of stocks with large growth potential to get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing!
We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.
If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
