One simple way to benefit from the stock market is to buy an index fund. But if you buy good businesses at attractive prices, your portfolio returns could exceed the average market return. For example, the Kingswood Holdings Limited (LON:KWG) share price is up 13% in the last three years, clearly besting the market decline of around 3.7% (not including dividends).

Now it's worth having a look at the company's fundamentals too, because that will help us determine if the long term shareholder return has matched the performance of the underlying business.

See our latest analysis for Kingswood Holdings

Kingswood Holdings isn't currently profitable, so most analysts would look to revenue growth to get an idea of how fast the underlying business is growing. Generally speaking, companies without profits are expected to grow revenue every year, and at a good clip. That's because it's hard to be confident a company will be sustainable if revenue growth is negligible, and it never makes a profit.

Kingswood Holdings' revenue trended up 93% each year over three years. That's much better than most loss-making companies. The share price rise of 4% per year throughout that time is nice to see, and given the revenue growth, that gain seems somewhat justified. So now might be the perfect time to put Kingswood Holdings on your radar. A window of opportunity may reveal itself with time, if the business can trend to profitability.

The company's revenue and earnings (over time) are depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).

Take a more thorough look at Kingswood Holdings' financial health with this free report on its balance sheet.

A Different Perspective

Investors in Kingswood Holdings had a tough year, with a total loss of 9.8%, against a market gain of about 1.5%. Even the share prices of good stocks drop sometimes, but we want to see improvements in the fundamental metrics of a business, before getting too interested. Unfortunately, last year's performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 1.6% over the last half decade. We realise that Baron Rothschild has said investors should "buy when there is blood on the streets", but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality business. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Kingswood Holdings better, we need to consider many other factors. Consider risks, for instance. Every company has them, and we've spotted 1 warning sign for Kingswood Holdings you should know about.