Hongkong Land Holdings Limited (SGX:H78) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 10% in the last month. But that doesn't change the fact that the returns over the last five years have been less than pleasing. After all, the share price is down 36% in that time, significantly under-performing the market.

So let's have a look and see if the longer term performance of the company has been in line with the underlying business' progress.

See our latest analysis for Hongkong Land 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 five years of share price growth, Hongkong Land Holdings moved from a loss to profitability. That would generally be considered a positive, so we are surprised to see the share price is down. Other metrics might give us a better handle on how its value is changing over time.

We note that the dividend has remained healthy, so that wouldn't really explain the share price drop. It's not immediately clear to us why the stock price is down but further research might provide some answers.

You can see below how earnings and revenue have changed over time (discover the exact values by clicking on the image).

Hongkong Land Holdings is well known by investors, and plenty of clever analysts have tried to predict the future profit levels. You can see what analysts are predicting for Hongkong Land Holdings in this interactive graph of future profit estimates.

What About Dividends?

As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). The TSR is a return calculation that accounts for the value of cash dividends (assuming that any dividend received was reinvested) and the calculated value of any discounted capital raisings and spin-offs. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. As it happens, Hongkong Land Holdings' TSR for the last 5 years was -21%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!

A Different Perspective

Investors in Hongkong Land Holdings had a tough year, with a total loss of 7.4% (including dividends), against a market gain of about 4.0%. However, keep in mind that even the best stocks will sometimes underperform the market over a twelve month period. Regrettably, last year's performance caps off a bad run, with the shareholders facing a total loss of 4% per year over five years. 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. 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. For example, we've discovered 1 warning sign for Hongkong Land Holdings that you should be aware of before investing here.