According to the analysts is this share currently starting to look like a bargain: Consensus SP is $7.66 and Buy Recommendation is a strong "HOLD" (5.9/10). But before we get too excited - how good have the analysts been in the past in the art of predicting the future?

In February 2019 the AIA share price peaked at $7.77. At that stage the combined mental power of 9 share market analysts forecasted that over the 12 months to February 2020 the AIA share price will drop by 17% to $6.46 (consensus). Obviously - we could argue that these wise men predicted already the current market crash, and just got the drop a bit early, but in that case did they predict the market crash for AIA already for a long time.

AIA actually peaked in February 2020 at $8.75, i.e. the actual share price was 35% above the consensus and SP moved into the opposite direction from the forecast (rise instead of drop) - i.e. analyst forecast is a clear FAIL.

Looking into the consensus buy recommendation - it was in February 2019 "UNDERPERFORM" (3.9/10) - i.e. analysts said that the share will underperform the NZX. NZX 50 went up by 21% and AIA went up by 13%. That's 8 % lower than the NZX performance and in the contet of this exercise a PASS.

I am doing this exercise as well with other NZX listed stocks - the overview is here:
https://www.sharetrader.co.nz/showth...arket-analysts

20 stock forecasts checked so far (checking for each consensus and buy recommendation);
Consensus share price forecasts correct: 4/20; analysts hitrate: 20%
Consensus recommendation vs NZX50 correct: 7/20; analysts hitrate: 35%

Based on this performance it might be questionable whether we want to trust the 'experts' with the current Buy recommendation.