The simplest way to invest in stocks is to buy exchange traded funds. But investors can boost returns by picking market-beating companies to own shares in. To wit, the Endeavour Group Limited (ASX:EDV) share price is 25% higher than it was a year ago, much better than the market decline of around 9.5% (not including dividends) in the same period. That's a solid performance by our standards! Endeavour Group hasn't been listed for long, so it's still not clear if it is a long term winner.

With that in mind, it's worth seeing if the company's underlying fundamentals have been the driver of long term performance, or if there are some discrepancies.

View our latest analysis for Endeavour Group

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).

Endeavour Group went from making a loss to reporting a profit, in the last year.

When a company has just transitioned to profitability, earnings per share growth is not always the best way to look at the share price action.

We think that the revenue growth of 142% could have some investors interested. We do see some companies suppress earnings in order to accelerate revenue growth.

You can see below how earnings and revenue have changed over time (discover the exact values by clicking on the image).

We like that insiders have been buying shares in the last twelve months. 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. In the case of Endeavour Group, it has a TSR of 29% for the last 1 year. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!

A Different Perspective

Endeavour Group boasts a total shareholder return of 29% for the last year (that includes the dividends) . The more recent returns haven't been as impressive as the longer term returns, coming in at just 2.2%. It seems likely the market is waiting on fundamental developments with the business before pushing the share price higher (or lower). It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Endeavour Group better, we need to consider many other factors. Even so, be aware that Endeavour Group is showing 1 warning sign in our investment analysis , you should know about...