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For many investors, the main point of stock picking is to generate higher returns than the overall market. But the risk of stock picking is that you will likely buy under-performing companies. Unfortunately, that's been the case for longer term Ambuja Cements Limited (NSE:AMBUJACEM) shareholders, since the share price is down 18% in the last three years, falling well short of the market return of around 25%. It's down 3.8% in the last seven days.
View our latest analysis for Ambuja Cements
While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just underlying business performance. 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).
Although the share price is down over three years, Ambuja Cements actually managed to grow EPS by 30% per year in that time. This is quite a puzzle, and suggests there might be something temporarily buoying the share price. Alternatively, growth expectations may have been unreasonable in the past.
It's worth taking a look at other metrics, because the EPS growth doesn't seem to match with the falling share price.
The modest 0.7% dividend yield is unlikely to be guiding the market view of the stock. Revenue is actually up 13% over the three years, so the share price drop doesn't seem to hinge on revenue, either. It's probably worth investigating Ambuja Cements further; while we may be missing something on this analysis, there might also be an opportunity.
You can see how earnings and revenue have changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).
Ambuja Cements is well known by investors, and plenty of clever analysts have tried to predict the future profit levels. You can see what analysts are predicting for Ambuja Cements in this interactive graph of future profit estimates.
What About Dividends?
As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). The TSR incorporates the value of any spin-offs or discounted capital raisings, along with any dividends, based on the assumption that the dividends are reinvested. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. As it happens, Ambuja Cements's TSR for the last 3 years was -16%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.
A Different Perspective
Investors in Ambuja Cements had a tough year, with a total loss of 6.7% (including dividends) , against a market gain of about 1.2%. Even the share prices of good stocks drop sometimes, but we want to see improvements in the fundamental metrics of a business, before getting too interested. On the bright side, long term shareholders have made money, with a gain of 0.8% per year over half a decade. It could be that the recent sell-off is an opportunity, so it may be worth checking the fundamental data for signs of a long term growth trend. Before spending more time on Ambuja Cements it might be wise to click here to see if insiders have been buying or selling shares.