The main point of investing for the long term is to make money. Better yet, you'd like to see the share price move up more than the market average. But Texas Instruments Incorporated (NASDAQ:TXN) has fallen short of that second goal, with a share price rise of 61% over five years, which is below the market return. However, more recent buyers should be happy with the increase of 32% over the last year.

So let's assess the underlying fundamentals over the last 5 years and see if they've moved in lock-step with shareholder returns.

View our latest analysis for Texas Instruments

While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just underlying business performance. By comparing earnings per share (EPS) and share price changes over time, we can get a feel for how investor attitudes to a company have morphed over time.

During five years of share price growth, Texas Instruments achieved compound earnings per share (EPS) growth of 0.7% per year. This EPS growth is lower than the 10% average annual increase in the share price. This suggests that market participants hold the company in higher regard, these days. And that's hardly shocking given the track record of growth.

The image below shows how EPS has tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).

This free interactive report on Texas Instruments' earnings, revenue and cash flow is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

What About Dividends?

It is important to consider the total shareholder return, as well as the share price return, for any given stock. 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. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. In the case of Texas Instruments, it has a TSR of 85% for the last 5 years. 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

Texas Instruments' TSR for the year was broadly in line with the market average, at 36%. That gain looks pretty satisfying, and it is even better than the five-year TSR of 13% per year. It is possible that management foresight will bring growth well into the future, even if the share price slows down. While it is well worth considering the different impacts that market conditions can have on the share price, there are other factors that are even more important. For example, we've discovered 2 warning signs for Texas Instruments that you should be aware of before investing here.