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In order to justify the effort of selecting individual stocks, it's worth striving to beat the returns from a market index fund. But the risk of stock picking is that you will likely buy under-performing companies. We regret to report that long term Lendlease Group (ASX:LLC) shareholders have had that experience, with the share price dropping 50% in three years, versus a market return of about 28%. Furthermore, it's down 12% in about a quarter. That's not much fun for holders.
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 Lendlease Group
Because Lendlease Group made a loss in the last twelve months, we think the market is probably more focussed on revenue and revenue growth, at least for now. Shareholders of unprofitable companies usually desire strong revenue growth. Some companies are willing to postpone profitability to grow revenue faster, but in that case one would hope for good top-line growth to make up for the lack of earnings.
In the last three years, Lendlease Group saw its revenue grow by 3.9% per year, compound. That's not a very high growth rate considering it doesn't make profits. It's likely this weak growth has contributed to an annualised return of 15% for the last three years. It can be well worth keeping an eye on growth stocks that disappoint the market, because sometimes they re-accelerate. After all, growing a business isn't easy, and the process will not always be smooth.
The image below shows how earnings and revenue have tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).
It's probably worth noting we've seen significant insider buying in the last quarter, which we consider a positive. On the other hand, we think the revenue and earnings trends are much more meaningful measures of the business. So it makes a lot of sense to check out what analysts think Lendlease Group will earn in the future (free profit forecasts).
What About Dividends?
As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). 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. We note that for Lendlease Group the TSR over the last 3 years was -48%, 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!