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What amazes me about Rolls-Royce Holdings (LSE: RR.) shares isn’t only that the price keeps on climbing, but that stock market analysts just can’t get enough of them. Every £1 invested in Rolls shares five years ago is now worth around £12. And steadily over that time, broker price targets have kept on rising and rising — and they’ve kept getting it right.
While it looked like we might be in for a down spell in early 2026, the Rolls-Royce share price has picked up a few percent again in February. And those forecasters are still expecting even better to come. So where might Rolls-Royce shares go next?
Recent upgrades have been powerfully upbeat, with both Jefferies and Deutsche Bank putting the same 1,550p price target on the stock. And at the the top of the current range, the latest from UBS suggests Rolls-Royce shares could reach 1,625p.
Those bullish prices suggest a further gain from the latest close of between 24% and 30%. And that would be enough to turn a £10,000 investment today into £12,400 to £13,000. It could mean a very nice profit without having to do any work. And remember, broker targets are generally relatively short term, so we might even see significantly higher estimates emerge before the end of the year.
A range of opinions
We have to keep in mind that the full range of analyst opinions is wider, with an average target of approximately 1,290p on the stock. And that would mean a gain of under 4%. Most of the low ones, though, tend to be older and from before the most recent run. How many of those might be lifted in the coming months? Right now we simply can’t know.
We must also remain wary of the quoted lowest end of the range, which stands at just 900p — for a 28% fall, which could shave £10,000 into just £7,200. Then again, the only specific 900p target I can find over the past 12 months was from JPMorgan back in March 2025 — and that’s been upgraded since then to 1,245p.
Until fairly recently, the most bearish price target had been a painfully low 240p. That was from Berenberg, with it then upped as far as 1,080p in October 2025. That’s still on the pessimistic side, but far from the old doom-and-gloom rating.
Key turning point
We’re entering a transition phase for Rolls-Royce now. And it presents opportunities as well as dangers. To look forward, we have organic growth potential in key businesses — like civil aviation and defence. Overall, CEO Tufan Erginbilgic has said the board sees “substantial growth prospects beyond the mid-term“.
Achieving that must partly depend on Rolls-Royce’s small modular reactors (SMR) business, which looks very promising. But the company doesn’t expect profit or positive cash flow from it until 2030.
The high-ish valuation, at what might be the culmination of the rapid share price growth phase, is enough to keep me away — I prefer boring dividend stocks. But I definitely see worthwhile long-term prospects for growth investors to consider.
