Shareholders in Criteo S.A. (NASDAQ:CRTO) may be thrilled to learn that the analysts have just delivered a major upgrade to their near-term forecasts. The consensus statutory numbers for both revenue and earnings per share (EPS) increased, with their view clearly much more bullish on the company's business prospects.

Following the latest upgrade, the current consensus, from the 13 analysts covering Criteo, is for revenues of US$1.3b in 2025, which would reflect a stressful 31% reduction in Criteo's sales over the past 12 months. Per-share earnings are expected to swell 19% to US$2.18. Before this latest update, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of US$1.2b and earnings per share (EPS) of US$1.97 in 2025. So we can see there's been a pretty clear increase in analyst sentiment in recent times, with both revenues and earnings per share receiving a decent lift in the latest estimates.

View our latest analysis for Criteo

As a result, it might be a surprise to see that the analysts have cut their price target 5.8% to US$53.15, which could suggest the forecast improvement in performance is not expected to last.

These estimates are interesting, but it can be useful to paint some more broad strokes when seeing how forecasts compare, both to the Criteo's past performance and to peers in the same industry. Over the past five years, revenues have declined around 3.1% annually. Worse, forecasts are essentially predicting the decline to accelerate, with the estimate for an annualised 26% decline in revenue until the end of 2025. Compare this against analyst estimates for companies in the broader industry, which suggest that revenues (in aggregate) are expected to grow 3.6% annually. So while a broad number of companies are forecast to grow, unfortunately Criteo is expected to see its sales affected worse than other companies in the industry.

The Bottom Line

The biggest takeaway for us from these new estimates is that analysts upgraded their earnings per share estimates, with improved earnings power expected for next year. Fortunately, they also upgraded their revenue estimates, and are forecasting revenues to grow slower than the wider market. A lower price target is not intuitively what we would expect from a company whose business prospects are improving - at least judging by these forecasts - but if the underlying fundamentals are strong, Criteo could be one for the watch list.

Even so, the longer term trajectory of the business is much more important for the value creation of shareholders. At Simply Wall St, we have a full range of analyst estimates for Criteo going out to 2026, and you can see them free on our platform here..