Do analysts forecast differently in periods of uncertainty? An empirical analysis of target prices for Spanish banks

Target prices are an estimation of the future value of a company’s stock price. Although there is a general consensus about the importance of firm’s fundamentals when forecasting, there are also other determinants. This article sheds light on the effects of uncertainty, financial stress and volatility on target price estimations. To do so, different indicators are elaborated for the eight main Spanish financial entities from 1999 to 2020. They show that, on average, analysts have an optimistic bias in their valuations, and tend to react with a delay to stock movements. The different measures of uncertainty, financial stress and volatility affect their estimations a) fostering the optimistic bias, b) reducing the speed and c) willingness of the adjustment to share price movements, and d) make them trust less on stock prices as indicators of banks’ fundamentals. This effects are reinforced by the aggregation method of the composite target price (in particular the role of the older individual contributions). Both factors work in tandem: as the more uncertain the economic and financial environment is, the less likely aggregate target prices would move according to stock prices, because older individual contributions will slow the adjustment process. A simple change in the aggregation method reduces its impact on the indicators, without substantially altering their conclusions.