In This Article:
We think all investors should try to buy and hold high quality multi-year winners. While not every stock performs well, when investors win, they can win big. Don't believe it? Then look at the Advantage Energy Ltd. (TSE:AAV) share price. It's 641% higher than it was five years ago. This just goes to show the value creation that some businesses can achieve. Also pleasing for shareholders was the 16% gain in the last three months. This could be related to the recent financial results, released recently - you can catch up on the most recent data by reading our company report. We love happy stories like this one. The company should be really proud of that performance!
The past week has proven to be lucrative for Advantage Energy investors, so let's see if fundamentals drove the company's five-year performance.
While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just underlying business performance. One flawed but reasonable way to assess how sentiment around a company has changed is to compare the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price.
During the five years of share price growth, Advantage Energy moved from a loss to profitability. That kind of transition can be an inflection point that justifies a strong share price gain, just as we have seen here.
The image below shows how EPS has tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).
It's probably worth noting we've seen significant insider buying in the last quarter, which we consider a positive. On the other hand, we think the revenue and earnings trends are much more meaningful measures of the business. Dive deeper into the earnings by checking this interactive graph of Advantage Energy's earnings, revenue and cash flow.
A Different Perspective
Advantage Energy shareholders gained a total return of 7.4% during the year. But that was short of the market average. If we look back over five years, the returns are even better, coming in at 49% per year for five years. It's quite possible the business continues to execute with prowess, even as the share price gains are slowing. While it is well worth considering the different impacts that market conditions can have on the share price, there are other factors that are even more important. For example, we've discovered 2 warning signs for Advantage Energy (1 is potentially serious!) that you should be aware of before investing here.