The main aim of stock picking is to find the market-beating stocks. But the main game is to find enough winners to more than offset the losers At this point some shareholders may be questioning their investment in ComfortDelGro Corporation Limited (SGX:C52), since the last five years saw the share price fall 43%.

Since shareholders are down over the longer term, lets look at the underlying fundamentals over the that time and see if they've been consistent with returns.

See our latest analysis for ComfortDelGro

To quote Buffett, 'Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace...' One way to examine how market sentiment has changed over time is to look at the interaction between a company's share price and its earnings per share (EPS).

Looking back five years, both ComfortDelGro's share price and EPS declined; the latter at a rate of 9.9% per year. Notably, the share price has fallen at 11% per year, fairly close to the change in the EPS. This implies that the market has had a fairly steady view of the stock. Rather, the share price change has reflected changes in earnings per share.

You can see how EPS has changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).

It is of course excellent to see how ComfortDelGro has grown profits over the years, but the future is more important for shareholders. This free interactive report on ComfortDelGro's balance sheet strength is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

What About Dividends?

When looking at investment returns, it is important to consider the difference between total shareholder return (TSR) and share price return. The TSR is a return calculation that accounts for the value of cash dividends (assuming that any dividend received was reinvested) and the calculated value of any discounted capital raisings and spin-offs. It's fair to say that the TSR gives a more complete picture for stocks that pay a dividend. We note that for ComfortDelGro the TSR over the last 5 years was -30%, 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 good to see that ComfortDelGro has rewarded shareholders with a total shareholder return of 31% in the last twelve months. And that does include the dividend. Notably the five-year annualised TSR loss of 5% per year compares very unfavourably with the recent share price performance. We generally put more weight on the long term performance over the short term, but the recent improvement could hint at a (positive) inflection point within the business. 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. Consider for instance, the ever-present spectre of investment risk. We've identified 1 warning sign with ComfortDelGro , and understanding them should be part of your investment process.