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The worst result, after buying shares in a company (assuming no leverage), would be if you lose all the money you put in. But on a lighter note, a good company can see its share price rise well over 100%. For instance, the price of China SCE Group Holdings Limited (HKG:1966) stock is up an impressive 111% over the last five years. On top of that, the share price is up 13% in about a quarter.

See our latest analysis for China SCE Group Holdings

While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just 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.

Over half a decade, China SCE Group Holdings managed to grow its earnings per share at 28% a year. This EPS growth is higher than the 16% average annual increase in the share price. Therefore, it seems the market has become relatively pessimistic about the company. This cautious sentiment is reflected in its (fairly low) P/E ratio of 3.56.

You can see below how EPS has 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. This free interactive report on China SCE Group Holdings'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). 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. In the case of China SCE Group Holdings, it has a TSR of 152% 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

While it's never nice to take a loss, China SCE Group Holdings shareholders can take comfort that, including dividends, their trailing twelve month loss of 11% wasn't as bad as the market loss of around 14%. Of course, the long term returns are far more important and the good news is that over five years, the stock has returned 20% for each year. It could be that the business is just facing some short term problems, but shareholders should keep a close eye on the fundamentals. If you want to research this stock further, the data on insider buying is an obvious place to start. You can click here to see who has been buying shares - and the price they paid.