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These days it's easy to simply buy an index fund, and your returns should (roughly) match the market. But one can do better than that by picking better than average stocks (as part of a diversified portfolio). For example, the A-Living Services Co., Ltd. (HKG:3319) share price is up 20% in the last year, clearly besting than the market return of around -4.5% (not including dividends). That's a solid performance by our standards! We'll need to follow A-Living Services for a while to get a better sense of its share price trend, since it hasn't been listed for particularly long.

View our latest analysis for A-Living Services

To quote Buffett, 'Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace...' 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 the last year A-Living Services grew its earnings per share (EPS) by 77%. This EPS growth is significantly higher than the 20% increase in the share price. Therefore, it seems the market isn't as excited about A-Living Services as it was before. This could be an opportunity.

The graphic below depicts how EPS has changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).

We know that A-Living Services has improved its bottom line over the last three years, but what does the future have in store? This free interactive report on A-Living Services's balance sheet strength is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

A Different Perspective

A-Living Services boasts a total shareholder return of 20% for the last year(that includes the dividends). And the share price momentum remains respectable, with a gain of 28% in the last three months. This suggests the company is continuing to win over new investors. If you would like to research A-Living Services in more detail then you might want to take a look at whether insiders have been buying or selling shares in the company.

If you like to buy stocks alongside management, then you might just love this free list of companies. (Hint: insiders have been buying them).

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on HK exchanges.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.