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Dr. Hönle AG (ETR:HNL) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 27% in the last quarter. Meanwhile over the last three years the stock has dropped hard. Indeed, the share price is down a tragic 69% in the last three years. So it's good to see it climbing back up. The rise has some hopeful, but turnarounds are often precarious.
It's worthwhile assessing if the company's economics have been moving in lockstep with these underwhelming shareholder returns, or if there is some disparity between the two. So let's do just that.
Dr. Hönle wasn't profitable in the last twelve months, it is unlikely we'll see a strong correlation between its share price and its earnings per share (EPS). Arguably revenue is our next best option. When a company doesn't make profits, we'd generally hope to see good revenue growth. As you can imagine, fast revenue growth, when maintained, often leads to fast profit growth.
Over the last three years, Dr. Hönle's revenue dropped 7.8% per year. That's not what investors generally want to see. The share price decline of 19% compound, over three years, is understandable given the company doesn't have profits to boast of, and revenue is moving in the wrong direction. Having said that, if growth is coming in the future, now may be the low ebb for the company. We don't generally like to own companies that lose money and can't grow revenues. But any company is worth looking at when it makes a maiden profit.
You can see below how earnings and revenue have changed over time (discover the exact values by clicking on the image).
Balance sheet strength is crucial. It might be well worthwhile taking a look at our free report on how its financial position has changed over time.
A Different Perspective
Dr. Hönle shareholders are down 50% for the year, but the market itself is up 16%. 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. Regrettably, last year's performance caps off a bad run, with the shareholders facing a total loss of 10% per year over five years. Generally speaking long term share price weakness can be a bad sign, though contrarian investors might want to research the stock in hope of a turnaround. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Dr. Hönle better, we need to consider many other factors. Case in point: We've spotted 3 warning signs for Dr. Hönle you should be aware of, and 2 of them are potentially serious.