Some stocks are best avoided. It hits us in the gut when we see fellow investors suffer a loss. Anyone who held Raffles Education Limited (SGX:NR7) for five years would be nursing their metaphorical wounds since the share price dropped 80% in that time. And some of the more recent buyers are probably worried, too, with the stock falling 28% in the last year. And the share price decline continued over the last week, dropping some 5.5%.

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.

View our latest analysis for Raffles Education

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 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.

Raffles Education became profitable within the last five years. Most would consider that to be a good thing, so it's counter-intuitive to see the share price declining. Other metrics may better explain the share price move.

Revenue is actually up 1.4% over the time period. A more detailed examination of the revenue and earnings may or may not explain why the share price languishes; there could be an opportunity.

The graphic below depicts how earnings and revenue have changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).

We consider it positive that insiders have made significant purchases in the last year. Even so, future earnings will be far more important to whether current shareholders make money. Before buying or selling a stock, we always recommend a close examination of historic growth trends, available here..

What About The Total Shareholder Return (TSR)?

We've already covered Raffles Education's share price action, but we should also mention its total shareholder return (TSR). The TSR attempts to capture the value of dividends (as if they were reinvested) as well as any spin-offs or discounted capital raisings offered to shareholders. Its history of dividend payouts mean that Raffles Education's TSR, which was a 77% drop over the last 5 years, was not as bad as the share price return.

A Different Perspective

While the broader market gained around 4.0% in the last year, Raffles Education shareholders lost 28%. 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 12% 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 Raffles Education better, we need to consider many other factors. Case in point: We've spotted 3 warning signs for Raffles Education you should be aware of.