Do analysts think that Imperial Brands is a buy, hold or sell?

Trying to predict how the Covid-19 crisis will impact on companies and sectors is not easy. Fortunately, large companies like Imperial Brands (LON:IMB) are well covered by professional analysts who are used to making forecasts about them.

Imperial Brands is one of just 200 shares in the UK market valued at more than £1.0 billion (its market cap is £13,231m). Shares like this are closely watched because they have an influential role in the performance of investment funds and pension portfolios held by millions of savers.

So how have the shares performed over the past year?

On a 12 month basis, the Imperial Brands share price has seen an absolute move of -34.9%. On a relative basis - which take into account the movement of the wider market - the shares have moved by -22.5% over the past year and by -15.0% over the past six months.

But what now?

GET MORE DATA-DRIVEN INSIGHTS INTO LON:IMB »

Do analysts rate it as a buy, sell or hold?

Regardless of recent performance, the main question is what the future holds. In uncertain economic conditions, it's often difficult to get an accurate view. The good news is that analysts generally have a solid understanding of the market's biggest businesses, so they are well-placed to make predictions. That shows up in their Buy, Hold and Sell recommendations.

Among the analysts covering Imperial Brands, there are currently:

• 6 Buy recommendations

• 5 Hold recommendations

• 0 Sell recommendations

With this kind of information, it's possible to start forming a view about the outlook for any share. A combination of recent price performance and analyst recommendations gives you a flavour of whether the market is expecting a bright future - or whether there are causes for concern.

It's also worth looking at the profile of the stock to understand whether it has strong positive exposure to important factors like Quality, Value and Momentum. On that basis, Stockopedia currently classifies Imperial Brands as a style neutral. You can read more about what that means here.

What next?

There are all sorts of factors that could affect Imperial Brands's share price this year – we simplify them into easy to understand scores with our Stockopedia StockReport. Click here to take a look at the StockReport for Imperial Brands – you might discover some surprising things you didn’t know.