While it may not be enough for some shareholders, we think it is good to see the PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL) share price up 18% in a single quarter. Meanwhile over the last three years the stock has dropped hard. Regrettably, the share price slid 52% in that period. So it is really good to see an improvement. The rise has some hopeful, but turnarounds are often precarious.

Since shareholders are down over the longer term, lets look at the underlying fundamentals over the that time and see if they've been consistent with returns.

Check out our latest analysis for PayPal Holdings

To quote Buffett, 'Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace...' 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.

Although the share price is down over three years, PayPal Holdings actually managed to grow EPS by 1.7% per year in that time. Given the share price reaction, one might suspect that EPS is not a good guide to the business performance during the period (perhaps due to a one-off loss or gain). Alternatively, growth expectations may have been unreasonable in the past.

It's pretty reasonable to suspect the market was previously to bullish on the stock, and has since moderated expectations. But it's possible a look at other metrics will be enlightening.

Revenue is actually up 8.1% over the three years, so the share price drop doesn't seem to hinge on revenue, either. It's probably worth investigating PayPal Holdings further; while we may be missing something on this analysis, there might also be an opportunity.

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

PayPal Holdings is well known by investors, and plenty of clever analysts have tried to predict the future profit levels. So we recommend checking out this free report showing consensus forecasts

A Different Perspective

We're pleased to report that PayPal Holdings shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 49% over one year. There's no doubt those recent returns are much better than the TSR loss of 3% per year over five years. This makes us a little wary, but the business might have turned around its fortunes. Most investors take the time to check the data on insider transactions. You can click here to see if insiders have been buying or selling.