The analysts covering Akebia Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKBA) delivered a dose of negativity to shareholders today, by making a substantial revision to their statutory forecasts for this year. This report focused on revenue estimates, and it looks as though the consensus view of the business has become substantially more conservative.

Following the latest downgrade, the three analysts covering Akebia Therapeutics provided consensus estimates of US$165m revenue in 2024, which would reflect a considerable 12% decline on its sales over the past 12 months. Before the latest update, the analysts were foreseeing US$189m of revenue in 2024. The consensus view seems to have become more pessimistic on Akebia Therapeutics, noting the substantial drop in revenue estimates in this update.

Check out our latest analysis for Akebia Therapeutics

These estimates are interesting, but it can be useful to paint some more broad strokes when seeing how forecasts compare, both to the Akebia Therapeutics' past performance and to peers in the same industry. Over the past five years, revenues have declined around 8.2% annually. Worse, forecasts are essentially predicting the decline to accelerate, with the estimate for an annualised 16% decline in revenue until the end of 2024. By contrast, our data suggests that other companies (with analyst coverage) in a similar industry are forecast to see their revenue grow 19% per year. So it's pretty clear that, while it does have declining revenues, the analysts also expect Akebia Therapeutics to suffer worse than the wider industry.

The Bottom Line

The clear low-light was that analysts slashing their revenue forecasts for Akebia Therapeutics this year. They also expect company revenue to perform worse than the wider market. Often, one downgrade can set off a daisy-chain of cuts, especially if an industry is in decline. So we wouldn't be surprised if the market became a lot more cautious on Akebia Therapeutics after today.

That said, the analysts might have good reason to be negative on Akebia Therapeutics, given dilutive stock issuance over the past year. For more information, you can click here to discover this and the 3 other risks we've identified.

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