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The simplest way to benefit from a rising market is to buy an index fund. While individual stocks can be big winners, plenty more fail to generate satisfactory returns. Investors in Bellway p.l.c. (LON:BWY) have tasted that bitter downside in the last year, as the share price dropped 27%. That falls noticeably short of the market decline of around 4.8%. Longer term shareholders haven't suffered as badly, since the stock is down a comparatively less painful 21% in three years. Furthermore, it's down 10% in about a quarter. That's not much fun for holders. However, one could argue that the price has been influenced by the general market, which is down 8.2% in the same timeframe.
While the stock has risen 5.9% in the past week but long term shareholders are still in the red, let's see what the fundamentals can tell us.
View our latest analysis for Bellway
To paraphrase Benjamin Graham: Over the short term the market is a voting machine, but over the long term it's a weighing machine. 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.
Even though the Bellway share price is down over the year, its EPS actually improved. Of course, the situation might betray previous over-optimism about growth.
It's surprising to see the share price fall so much, despite the improved EPS. So it's easy to justify a look at some other metrics.
Bellway's dividend seems healthy to us, so we doubt that the yield is a concern for the market. From what we can see, revenue is pretty flat, so that doesn't really explain the share price drop. Unless, of course, the market was expecting a revenue uptick.
The image below shows how earnings and revenue have tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).
We consider it positive that insiders have made significant purchases in the last year. Even so, future earnings will be far more important to whether current shareholders make money. So we recommend checking out this free report showing consensus forecasts
What About Dividends?
As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). 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 Bellway the TSR over the last 1 year was -24%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.