By buying an index fund, investors can approximate the average market return. But if you pick the right individual stocks, you could make more than that. For example, Revance Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:RVNC) shareholders have seen the share price rise 80% over three years, well in excess of the market return (27%, not including dividends).

Let's take a look at the underlying fundamentals over the longer term, and see if they've been consistent with shareholders returns.

View our latest analysis for Revance Therapeutics

Because Revance Therapeutics 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. When a company doesn't make profits, we'd generally expect to see good revenue growth. Some companies are willing to postpone profitability to grow revenue faster, but in that case one does expect good top-line growth.

In the last 3 years Revance Therapeutics saw its revenue grow at 109% per year. That's much better than most loss-making companies. While the compound gain of 22% per year over three years is pretty good, you might argue it doesn't fully reflect the strong revenue growth. So now might be the perfect time to put Revance Therapeutics on your radar. A window of opportunity may reveal itself with time, if the business can trend to profitability.

You can see below how earnings and revenue have changed over time (discover the exact values by clicking on the image).

We consider it positive that insiders have made significant purchases in the last year. Having said that, most people consider earnings and revenue growth trends to be a more meaningful guide to the business. You can see what analysts are predicting for Revance Therapeutics in this interactive graph of future profit estimates.

A Different Perspective

While it's never nice to take a loss, Revance Therapeutics shareholders can take comfort that their trailing twelve month loss of 6.8% wasn't as bad as the market loss of around 17%. Longer term investors wouldn't be so upset, since they would have made 1.5%, each year, over five years. It could be that the business is just facing some short term problems, but shareholders should keep a close eye on the fundamentals. I find it very interesting to look at share price over the long term as a proxy for business performance. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. Even so, be aware that Revance Therapeutics is showing 4 warning signs in our investment analysis , and 1 of those shouldn't be ignored...