(Photo Credit: Chris McCormack)

Under Armour is set to report earnings for its third quarter of 2014 before the market opens on Thursday, October 23. Under Armour is expanding at an unbelievable rate, but the main reason the stock has investors cheering is because there is much potential for growth in the near future. Here are the 3 reasons why Under Armour’s best years lie ahead.

• Revenue growth is going to accelerate this quarter

Although Under Armour didn’t live up to investors’ expectations last quarter when it missed the Estimize earnings consensus by a penny per share, the market reacted favorably to a much better than expected revenue number. In July Under Armour reported sales of $609.65 million, beating the Wall Street consensus by 6.5% and topping Estimize by 2.4%. Thursday analysts on Estimize are optimistic again, looking for sales growth of $214 million (30%) compared to last year. A pace of 30% sales growth would be a slight drop sequentially, but an acceleration from the 26% increase registered in the same quarter of last year.

• Under Armour is focusing its marketing efforts on unsaturated niches

In Under Armour’s infancy the company ran an adrenaline fueled sweat soaked marketing campaign. The ads were pretty cool, but it was clear which demographic they focused on. The “We Must Protect This House” campaign captured the intensity of professional sports. Ads featured a ripped football player yelling “We must protect this house!” as if he were a Spartan about to fight to his death in the Battle of Thermopylae.

Under Armour is now smartly changing gears targeting supplementary audiences. Earlier this year they produced an inspiring campaign with ballerina, Misty Copeland. Their latest blockbuster signing, Victoria’s Secret super model Gisele Bundchen, does a great job of carrying on the “I WILL WHAT I WANT” campaign focused on women. Her international celebrity also speaks volumes to Under Armour’s global ambitions. Under Armour is doing a great job looking ahead and trying to expand rather than squandering promotional dollars on tapped out markets with decreasing marginal returns.

• The athletic wear market is booming

It’s rare that a company with between $600 million to $1 billion in sales each quarter can grow revenue by at least 30% in 4 consecutive quarters, but that’s exactly what contributing analysts on Estimize expect Under Armour to do. Even companies with much larger volume are exploding right now. Just look at the earnings Nike posted in its most recent quarter below.

There is still a humungous market for Under Armour to grow into on international sales and perhaps some opportunity to wrestle market share away from Nike. Nike is doing 8x more sales than Under Armour and even it is continuing to grow by double digits on the top and bottom line respectively (27% and 15% last quarter). If the global athletic wear tailwinds persist, Under Armour is going to be a hot stock for years to come.

There’s not much more to say. Under Armour has outperformed the Wall Street profit forecast in 7 of the past 8 quarters. In 5 of those periods contributing analysts on Estimize nailed the number, and they underestimated earnings only twice. The lone quarter where Under Armour failed to live up to the Estimize community’s expectations was in the report from July, where revenues crushed expectations. This quarter you can expect more great results from Under Armour. Analysts on Estimize are expecting gigantic growth from the thriving athletic wear company and a beat relative to the Wall Street consensus of 2 cents in EPS and $10 million in sales.