For us, stock picking is in large part the hunt for the truly magnificent stocks. Not every pick can be a winner, but when you pick the right stock, you can win big. One such superstar is APB Resources Berhad (KLSE:APB), which saw its share price soar 601% in three years. On top of that, the share price is up 108% in about a quarter. It really delights us to see such great share price performance for investors.

The past week has proven to be lucrative for APB Resources Berhad investors, so let's see if fundamentals drove the company's three-year performance.

View our latest analysis for APB Resources Berhad

There is no denying that markets are sometimes efficient, but prices do not always reflect underlying business performance. One imperfect but simple way to consider how the market perception of a company has shifted is to compare the change in the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price movement.

APB Resources Berhad became profitable within the last three years. Given the importance of this milestone, it's not overly surprising that the share price has increased strongly.

The image below shows how EPS has tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).

It might be well worthwhile taking a look at our free report on APB Resources Berhad's earnings, revenue and cash flow.

What About Dividends?

When looking at investment returns, it is important to consider the difference between total shareholder return (TSR) and share price return. Whereas the share price return only reflects the change in the share price, the TSR includes the value of dividends (assuming they were reinvested) and the benefit of any discounted capital raising or spin-off. Arguably, the TSR gives a more comprehensive picture of the return generated by a stock. We note that for APB Resources Berhad the TSR over the last 3 years was 660%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.

A Different Perspective

It's nice to see that APB Resources Berhad shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 380% over the last year. That's including the dividend. That's better than the annualised return of 29% over half a decade, implying that the company is doing better recently. Someone with an optimistic perspective could view the recent improvement in TSR as indicating that the business itself is getting better with time. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand APB Resources Berhad better, we need to consider many other factors. Take risks, for example - APB Resources Berhad has 3 warning signs (and 1 which doesn't sit too well with us) we think you should know about.