MediaAlpha, Inc. (NYSE:MAX) shareholders will have a reason to smile today, with the analysts making substantial upgrades to this year's statutory forecasts. The revenue forecast for this year has experienced a facelift, with analysts now much more optimistic on its sales pipeline. MediaAlpha has also found favour with investors, with the stock up a worthy 20% to US$22.08 over the past week. We'll be curious to see if these new estimates convince the market to lift the stock price higher still.

Following the upgrade, the most recent consensus for MediaAlpha from its seven analysts is for revenues of US$550m in 2024 which, if met, would be a sizeable 37% increase on its sales over the past 12 months. The loss per share is anticipated to greatly reduce in the near future, narrowing 48% to US$0.32. Yet prior to the latest estimates, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of US$498m and losses of US$0.32 per share in 2024. So there's been quite a change-up of views after the recent consensus updates, withthe analysts noticeably increasing their revenue forecasts while also expecting losses per share to hold steady.

Check out our latest analysis for MediaAlpha

Analysts increased their price target 13% to US$24.00, perhaps signalling that higher revenues are a strong leading indicator for MediaAlpha's valuation.

These estimates are interesting, but it can be useful to paint some more broad strokes when seeing how forecasts compare, both to the MediaAlpha's past performance and to peers in the same industry. One thing stands out from these estimates, which is that MediaAlpha is forecast to grow faster in the future than it has in the past, with revenues expected to display 51% annualised growth until the end of 2024. If achieved, this would be a much better result than the 22% annual decline over the past three years. By contrast, our data suggests that other companies (with analyst coverage) in the industry are forecast to see their revenue grow 10% per year. So it looks like MediaAlpha is expected to grow faster than its competitors, at least for a while.

The Bottom Line

The most important thing here is that analysts reduced their loss per share estimates for this year, reflecting increased optimism around MediaAlpha's prospects. They also upgraded their revenue estimates for this year, and sales are expected to grow faster than the wider market. There was also an increase in the price target, suggesting that there is more optimism baked into the forecasts than there was previously. Seeing the dramatic upgrade to this year's forecasts, it might be time to take another look at MediaAlpha.

Analysts are clearly in love with MediaAlpha at the moment, but before diving in - you should be aware that we've identified some warning flags with the business, such as dilutive stock issuance over the past year. For more information, you can click through to our platform to learn more about this and the 1 other concern we've identified .

Another way to search for interesting companies that could be reaching an inflection point is to track whether management are buying or selling, with our free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.

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