Price target

In detail

A price target is an analyst's published estimate of a stock's fair value at some future point, almost always twelve months out. Where several analysts cover a stock, the low, mean, and high targets summarize how much they disagree. The spread is often more informative than the average. A tight cluster suggests a business whose economics are broadly understood. A wide spread means the outcome depends on an assumption analysts do not share — a pending approval, a contested market, a margin trajectory nobody can pin down. That disagreement is a better description of the risk than any single number in the range. Read them with real scepticism. Price targets are systematically optimistic across the industry; they are revised toward the market price rather than leading it, so a target being "raised" often just means the stock already rose; and the analyst's employer may have banking relationships with the company. A target is a statement about what one analyst expects, published under commercial pressure. It is not a forecast with a track record attached, and it is not a reason to buy or sell.