Shareholders of American Public Education, Inc. (NASDAQ:APEI) will be pleased this week, given that the stock price is up 18% to US$19.85 following its latest third-quarter results. It looks like a credible result overall - although revenues of US$153m were what the analysts expected, American Public Education surprised by delivering a (statutory) profit of US$0.04 per share, an impressive 300% above what was forecast. 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. We thought readers would find it interesting to see the analysts latest (statutory) post-earnings forecasts for next year.

View our latest analysis for American Public Education

Taking into account the latest results, the most recent consensus for American Public Education from four analysts is for revenues of US$647.8m in 2025. If met, it would imply a reasonable 5.6% increase on its revenue over the past 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are predicted to bounce 153% to US$1.43. In the lead-up to this report, the analysts had been modelling revenues of US$641.0m and earnings per share (EPS) of US$1.33 in 2025. So the consensus seems to have become somewhat more optimistic on American Public Education's earnings potential following these results.

The consensus price target rose 25% to US$23.00, suggesting that higher earnings estimates flow through to the stock's valuation as well. It could also be instructive to look at the range of analyst estimates, to evaluate how different the outlier opinions are from the mean. Currently, the most bullish analyst values American Public Education at US$25.00 per share, while the most bearish prices it at US$20.00. This is a very narrow spread of estimates, implying either that American Public Education is an easy company to value, or - more likely - the analysts are relying heavily on some key assumptions.

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. We would highlight that American Public Education's revenue growth is expected to slow, with the forecast 4.5% annualised growth rate until the end of 2025 being well below the historical 19% p.a. growth over the last five years. Compare this against other companies (with analyst forecasts) in the industry, which are in aggregate expected to see revenue growth of 10% 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 American Public Education.