It is a pleasure to report that the Yeebo (International Holdings) Limited (HKG:259) is up 36% in the last quarter. But that cannot eclipse the less-than-impressive returns over the last three years. In fact, the share price is down 54% in the last three years, falling well short of the market return.

See our latest analysis for Yeebo (International Holdings)

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 the three years that the share price fell, Yeebo (International Holdings)'s earnings per share (EPS) dropped by 19% each year. This fall in EPS isn't far from the rate of share price decline, which was 23% per year. So it seems that investor expectations of the company are staying pretty steady, despite the disappointment. Rather, the share price has approximately tracked EPS growth.

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

We like that insiders have been buying shares in the last twelve months. Having said that, most people consider earnings and revenue growth trends to be a more meaningful guide to the business. Dive deeper into the earnings by checking this interactive graph of Yeebo (International Holdings)'s earnings, revenue and cash flow.

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. As it happens, Yeebo (International Holdings)'s TSR for the last 3 years was -46%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!

A Different Perspective

It's good to see that Yeebo (International Holdings) has rewarded shareholders with a total shareholder return of 47% in the last twelve months. And that does include the dividend. There's no doubt those recent returns are much better than the TSR loss of 3.8% per year over five years. We generally put more weight on the long term performance over the short term, but the recent improvement could hint at a (positive) inflection point within the business. I find it very interesting to look at share price over the long term as a proxy for business performance. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. To that end, you should be aware of the 2 warning signs we've spotted with Yeebo (International Holdings) .