The latest analyst coverage could presage a bad day for Swiss Life Holding AG (VTX:SLHN), with the analysts making across-the-board cuts to their statutory estimates that might leave shareholders a little shell-shocked. 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 six analysts covering Swiss Life Holding provided consensus estimates of CHF17b revenue in 2023, which would reflect a stressful 22% decline on its sales over the past 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are anticipated to drop 19% to CHF39.15 in the same period. Prior to this update, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of CHF20b and earnings per share (EPS) of CHF40.76 in 2023. Indeed, we can see that analyst sentiment has declined measurably after the new consensus came out, with a measurable cut to revenue estimates and a small dip in EPS estimates to boot.

Check out our latest analysis for Swiss Life Holding

Analysts made no major changes to their price target of CHF611, suggesting the downgrades are not expected to have a long-term impact on Swiss Life Holding's valuation.

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. Over the past five years, revenues have declined around 2.2% annually. Worse, forecasts are essentially predicting the decline to accelerate, with the estimate for an annualised 39% decline in revenue until the end of 2023. By contrast, our data suggests that other companies (with analyst coverage) in a similar industry are forecast to see their revenue grow 5.8% per year. So while a broad number of companies are forecast to grow, unfortunately Swiss Life Holding is expected to see its sales affected worse than other companies in the industry.

The Bottom Line

The biggest issue in the new estimates is that analysts have reduced their earnings per share estimates, suggesting business headwinds lay ahead for Swiss Life Holding. Unfortunately analysts also downgraded their revenue estimates, and industry data suggests that Swiss Life Holding's revenues are expected to grow slower than the wider market. Overall, given the drastic downgrade to this year's forecasts, we'd be feeling a little more wary of Swiss Life Holding going forwards.

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 Swiss Life Holding going out to 2026, and you can see them free on our platform here.