We think all investors should try to buy and hold high quality multi-year winners. And we've seen some truly amazing gains over the years. For example, the Eleco Plc (LON:ELCO) share price is up a whopping 577% in the last half decade, a handsome return for long term holders. And this is just one example of the epic gains achieved by some long term investors. It's also good to see the share price up 10% over the last quarter.

We love happy stories like this one. The company should be really proud of that performance!

See our latest analysis for Eleco

There is no denying that markets are sometimes efficient, but prices do not always reflect underlying business performance. 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, Eleco achieved compound earnings per share (EPS) growth of 29% per year. This EPS growth is slower than the share price growth of 47% per year, over the same period. So it's fair to assume the market has a higher opinion of the business than it did five years ago. That's not necessarily surprising considering the five-year track record of earnings growth.

The company's earnings per share (over time) is depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).

We know that Eleco has improved its bottom line lately, but is it going to grow revenue? You could check out this free report showing analyst revenue forecasts.

What About Dividends?

It is important to consider the total shareholder return, as well as the share price return, for any given stock. 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, Eleco's TSR for the last 5 years was 603%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!

A Different Perspective

It's nice to see that Eleco shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 75% over the last year. And that does include the dividend. That's better than the annualised return of 48% over half a decade, implying that the company is doing better recently. Someone with an optimistic perspective could view the recent improvement in TSR as indicating that the business itself is getting better with time. If you would like to research Eleco in more detail then you might want to take a look at whether insiders have been buying or selling shares in the company.