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ASTI Holdings Limited (SGX:575) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 19% in the last month. But over the last half decade, the stock has not performed well. In fact, the share price is down 52%, which falls well short of the return you could get by buying an index fund.
View our latest analysis for ASTI Holdings
While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just underlying business performance. By comparing earnings per share (EPS) and share price changes over time, we can get a feel for how investor attitudes to a company have morphed over time.
ASTI Holdings became profitable within the last five years. That would generally be considered a positive, so we are surprised to see the share price is down. Other metrics might give us a better handle on how its value is changing over time.
Arguably, the revenue drop of 17% a year for half a decade suggests that the company can't grow in the long term. This has probably encouraged some shareholders to sell down the stock.
The image below shows how earnings and revenue have tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).
You can see how its balance sheet has strengthened (or weakened) over time in this free interactive graphic.
What about the Total Shareholder Return (TSR)?
Investors should note that there's a difference between ASTI Holdings's total shareholder return (TSR) and its share price change, which we've covered above. Arguably the TSR is a more complete return calculation because it accounts for the value of dividends (as if they were reinvested), along with the hypothetical value of any discounted capital that have been offered to shareholders. Its history of dividend payouts mean that ASTI Holdings's TSR, which was a 26% drop over the last 5 years, was not as bad as the share price return.
A Different Perspective
While the broader market lost about 21% in the twelve months, ASTI Holdings shareholders did even worse, losing 26%. However, it could simply be that the share price has been impacted by broader market jitters. It might be worth keeping an eye on the fundamentals, in case there's a good opportunity. Unfortunately, last year's performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 5.7% over the last half decade. We realise that Baron Rothschild has said investors should "buy when there is blood on the streets", but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality business. I find it very interesting to look at share price over the long term as a proxy for business performance. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. For instance, we've identified 3 warning signs for ASTI Holdings that you should be aware of.