Last week, you might have seen that Cadeler A/S (OB:CADLR) released its first-quarter result to the market. The early response was not positive, with shares down 9.0% to kr61.90 in the past week. Revenues fell badly short of expectations, with revenue of €125m missing analyst predictions by 23%. Statutory earnings correspondingly nosedived, with Cadeler reporting a loss of €0.02 per share, where the analysts were expecting a profit. 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 collected the latest post-earnings statutory consensus estimates to see what could be in store for next year.

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Taking into account the latest results, the consensus forecast from Cadeler's seven analysts is for revenues of €888.0m in 2026. This reflects a sizeable 31% improvement in revenue compared to the last 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are forecast to sink 16% to €0.59 in the same period. In the lead-up to this report, the analysts had been modelling revenues of €894.3m and earnings per share (EPS) of €0.64 in 2026. 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 small dip in their earnings per share forecasts.

See our latest analysis for Cadeler

Despite cutting their earnings forecasts,the analysts have lifted their price target 5.1% to kr69.92, suggesting that these impacts are not expected to weigh on the stock's value in the long term. There's another way to think about price targets though, and that's to look at the range of price targets put forward by analysts, because a wide range of estimates could suggest a diverse view on possible outcomes for the business. Currently, the most bullish analyst values Cadeler at kr79.81 per share, while the most bearish prices it at kr52.64. We would probably assign less value to the analyst forecasts in this situation, because such a wide range of estimates could imply that the future of this business is difficult to value accurately. As a result it might not be a great idea to make decisions based on the consensus price target, which is after all just an average of this wide range of estimates.

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 Cadeler's revenue growth will slow down substantially, with revenues to the end of 2026 expected to display 43% growth on an annualised basis. This is compared to a historical growth rate of 54% over the past five years. Juxtapose this against the other companies in the industry with analyst coverage, which are forecast to grow their revenues (in aggregate) 5.0% per year. Even after the forecast slowdown in growth, it seems obvious that Cadeler is also expected to grow faster than the wider industry.

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.

Following on from that line of thought, we think that the long-term prospects of the business are much more relevant than next year's earnings. At Simply Wall St, we have a full range of analyst estimates for Cadeler going out to 2028, and you can see them free on our platform here..

We don't want to rain on the parade too much, but we did also find 2 warning signs for Cadeler (1 is a bit unpleasant!) that you need to be mindful of.