It's easy to match the overall market return by buying an index fund. When you buy individual stocks, you can make higher profits, but you also face the risk of under-performance. Investors in InNature Berhad (KLSE:INNATURE) have tasted that bitter downside in the last year, as the share price dropped 14%. That's disappointing when you consider the market declined 2.6%. Because InNature Berhad hasn't been listed for many years, the market is still learning about how the business performs.

With that in mind, it's worth seeing if the company's underlying fundamentals have been the driver of long term performance, or if there are some discrepancies.

Check out our latest analysis for InNature Berhad

There is no denying that markets are sometimes efficient, but prices do not always reflect 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.

During the unfortunate twelve months during which the InNature Berhad share price fell, it actually saw its earnings per share (EPS) improve by 50%. It's quite possible that growth expectations may have been unreasonable in the past.

It's surprising to see the share price fall so much, despite the improved EPS. So it's well worth checking out some other metrics, too.

We don't see any weakness in the InNature Berhad's dividend so the steady payout can't really explain the share price drop. The revenue trend doesn't seem to explain why the share price is down. Of course, it could simply be that it simply fell short of the market consensus expectations.

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

We know that InNature Berhad has improved its bottom line lately, but what does the future have in store? You can see what analysts are predicting for InNature Berhad 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. Arguably, the TSR gives a more comprehensive picture of the return generated by a stock. We note that for InNature Berhad the TSR over the last 1 year was -11%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!