One simple way to benefit from the stock market is to buy an index fund. But if you buy good businesses at attractive prices, your portfolio returns could exceed the average market return. For example, the FirstRand Limited (JSE:FSR) share price is up 70% in the last three years, clearly besting the market return of around 21% (not including dividends). However, more recent returns haven't been as impressive as that, with the stock returning just 21% in the last year , including dividends .

Since the stock has added R17b to its market cap in the past week alone, let's see if underlying performance has been driving long-term returns.

See our latest analysis for FirstRand

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 three years of share price growth, FirstRand achieved compound earnings per share growth of 7.1% per year. In comparison, the 19% per year gain in the share price outpaces the EPS growth. This indicates that the market is feeling more optimistic on the stock, after the last few years of progress. It's not unusual to see the market 're-rate' a stock, after a few years of growth.

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

We consider it positive that insiders have made significant purchases in the last year. Even so, future earnings will be far more important to whether current shareholders make money. This free interactive report on FirstRand's earnings, revenue and cash flow is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

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 FirstRand, it has a TSR of 97% for the last 3 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.

A Different Perspective

It's good to see that FirstRand has rewarded shareholders with a total shareholder return of 21% in the last twelve months. And that does include the dividend. Since the one-year TSR is better than the five-year TSR (the latter coming in at 7% per year), it would seem that the stock's performance has improved in recent times. In the best case scenario, this may hint at some real business momentum, implying that now could be a great time to delve deeper. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand FirstRand better, we need to consider many other factors. For example, we've discovered 3 warning signs for FirstRand (1 can't be ignored!) that you should be aware of before investing here.