Ideally, your overall portfolio should beat the market average. But in any portfolio, there will be mixed results between individual stocks. At this point some shareholders may be questioning their investment in Rathbones Group Plc (LON:RAT), since the last five years saw the share price fall 27%. Furthermore, it's down 13% in about a quarter. That's not much fun for holders. Of course, this share price action may well have been influenced by the 7.8% decline in the broader market, throughout the period.

Now let's have a look at the company's fundamentals, and see if the long term shareholder return has matched the performance of the underlying business.

Check out our latest analysis for Rathbones Group

While the efficient markets hypothesis continues to be taught by some, it has been proven that markets are over-reactive dynamic systems, and investors are not always rational. By comparing earnings per share (EPS) and share price changes over time, we can get a feel for how investor attitudes to a company have morphed over time.

During the unfortunate half decade during which the share price slipped, Rathbones Group actually saw its earnings per share (EPS) improve by 9.9% per year. 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.

Because of the sharp contrast between the EPS growth rate and the share price growth, we're inclined to look to other metrics to understand the changing market sentiment around the stock.

The steady dividend doesn't really explain why the share price is down. While it's not completely obvious why the share price is down, a closer look at the company's history might help explain it.

The image below shows how earnings and revenue have tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).

We know that Rathbones Group has improved its bottom line lately, but what does the future have in store? So it makes a lot of sense to check out what analysts think Rathbones Group will earn in the future (free profit forecasts).

What About Dividends?

When looking at investment returns, it is important to consider the difference between total shareholder return (TSR) and share price return. 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 Rathbones Group the TSR over the last 5 years was -13%, 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!