Many investors define successful investing as beating the market average over the long term. But the risk of stock picking is that you will likely buy under-performing companies. Unfortunately, that's been the case for longer term Heeton Holdings Limited (SGX:5DP) shareholders, since the share price is down 13% in the last three years, falling well short of the market return of around 24%. The falls have accelerated recently, with the share price down 11% in the last three months.

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.

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Heeton Holdings isn't currently profitable, so most analysts would look to revenue growth to get an idea of how fast the underlying business is growing. Generally speaking, companies without profits are expected to grow revenue every year, and at a good clip. 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.

Over three years, Heeton Holdings grew revenue at 12% per year. That's a fairly respectable growth rate. Shareholders have seen the share price fall at 4% per year, for three years. So the market has definitely lost some love for the stock. However, that's in the past now, and it's the future is more important - and the future looks brighter (based on revenue, anyway).

You can see how earnings and revenue have changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).

Take a more thorough look at Heeton Holdings' financial health with this free report on its balance sheet.

What About Dividends?

When looking at investment returns, it is important to consider the difference between total shareholder return (TSR) and share price return. 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. Arguably, the TSR gives a more comprehensive picture of the return generated by a stock. We note that for Heeton Holdings the TSR over the last 3 years was -8.4%, 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!