In This Article:
Want to participate in a research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and earn a $60 gift card!
When you buy and hold a stock for the long term, you definitely want it to provide a positive return. Furthermore, you'd generally like to see the share price rise faster than the market But Gjensidige Forsikring ASA (OB:GJF) has fallen short of that second goal, with a share price rise of 32% over five years, which is below the market return. However, if you include the dividends then the return is market beating. Zooming in, the stock is up a respectable 17% in the last year.
Check out our latest analysis for Gjensidige Forsikring
While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just underlying business performance. One flawed but reasonable way to assess how sentiment around a company has changed is to compare the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price.
During five years of share price growth, Gjensidige Forsikring actually saw its EPS drop 1.6% per year. By glancing at these numbers, we'd posit that the decline in earnings per share is not representative of how the business has changed over the years. Therefore, it's worth taking a look at other metrics to try to understand the share price movements.
In fact, the dividend has increased over time, which is a positive. Maybe dividend investors have helped support the share price. The revenue growth of about 3.5% per year might also encourage buyers.
The graphic below shows how revenue and earnings have changed as management guided the business forward. If you want to see cashflow, you can click on the chart.
Gjensidige Forsikring 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 Gjensidige Forsikring in this interactive graph of future profit estimates.
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, Gjensidige Forsikring's TSR for the last 5 years was 102%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.
A Different Perspective
It's good to see that Gjensidige Forsikring has rewarded shareholders with a total shareholder return of 22% in the last twelve months. Of course, that includes the dividend. Since the one-year TSR is better than the five-year TSR (the latter coming in at 15% 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. If you would like to research Gjensidige Forsikring in more detail then you might want to take a look at whether insiders have been buying or selling shares in the company.