When you buy a stock there is always a possibility that it could drop 100%. But when you pick a company that is really flourishing, you can make more than 100%. For example, the Danaher Corporation (NYSE:DHR) share price has soared 219% in the last half decade. Most would be very happy with that. On top of that, the share price is up 16% in about a quarter.

While the stock has fallen 4.6% this week, it's worth focusing on the longer term and seeing if the stocks historical returns have been driven by the underlying fundamentals.

View our latest analysis for Danaher

While the efficient markets hypothesis continues to be taught by some, it has been proven that markets are over-reactive dynamic systems, and investors are not always rational. 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.

During five years of share price growth, Danaher achieved compound earnings per share (EPS) growth of 22% per year. So the EPS growth rate is rather close to the annualized share price gain of 26% per year. This indicates that investor sentiment towards the company has not changed a great deal. Indeed, it would appear the share price is reacting to the EPS.

The graphic below depicts how EPS has changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).

We know that Danaher has improved its bottom line over the last three years, but what does the future have in store? If you are thinking of buying or selling Danaher stock, you should check out this FREE detailed report on its balance sheet.

What About Dividends?

It is important to consider the total shareholder return, as well as the share price return, for any given stock. 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. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. We note that for Danaher the TSR over the last 5 years was 227%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!

A Different Perspective

While it's never nice to take a loss, Danaher shareholders can take comfort that , including dividends,their trailing twelve month loss of 14% wasn't as bad as the market loss of around 17%. Of course, the long term returns are far more important and the good news is that over five years, the stock has returned 27% for each year. In the best case scenario the last year is just a temporary blip on the journey to a brighter future. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Danaher better, we need to consider many other factors. Case in point: We've spotted 1 warning sign for Danaher you should be aware of.