United Rentals, Inc. (NYSE:URI) came out with its quarterly results last week, and we wanted to see how the business is performing and what industry forecasters think of the company following this report. Revenues of US$4.0b were in line with forecasts, although statutory earnings per share (EPS) came in below expectations at US$10.70, missing estimates by 5.6%. 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. So we collected the latest post-earnings statutory consensus estimates to see what could be in store for next year.

See our latest analysis for United Rentals

Taking into account the latest results, the most recent consensus for United Rentals from 20 analysts is for revenues of US$15.9b in 2025. If met, it would imply an okay 6.1% increase on its revenue over the past 12 months. Per-share earnings are expected to expand 10% to US$43.19. Before this earnings report, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of US$15.9b and earnings per share (EPS) of US$43.21 in 2025. So it's pretty clear that, although the analysts have updated their estimates, there's been no major change in expectations for the business following the latest results.

There were no changes to revenue or earnings estimates or the price target of US$797, suggesting that the company has met expectations in its recent result. The consensus price target is just an average of individual analyst targets, so - it could be handy to see how wide the range of underlying estimates is. There are some variant perceptions on United Rentals, with the most bullish analyst valuing it at US$1,232 and the most bearish at US$559 per share. Note the wide gap in analyst price targets? This implies to us that there is a fairly broad range of possible scenarios for the underlying business.

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. It's pretty clear that there is an expectation that United Rentals' revenue growth will slow down substantially, with revenues to the end of 2025 expected to display 4.9% growth on an annualised basis. This is compared to a historical growth rate of 13% over the past five years. Compare this to the 59 other companies in this industry with analyst coverage, which are forecast to grow their revenue at 5.4% per year. Factoring in the forecast slowdown in growth, it looks like United Rentals is forecast to grow at about the same rate as the wider industry.