When we invest, we're generally looking for stocks that outperform the market average. Buying under-rated businesses is one path to excess returns. To wit, the Shopping Centres Australasia Property Group share price has climbed 53% in five years, easily topping the market return of 18% (ignoring dividends). On the other hand, the more recent gains haven't been so impressive, with shareholders gaining just 15% , including dividends .

View our latest analysis for Shopping Centres Australasia Property Group

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.

During five years of share price growth, Shopping Centres Australasia Property Group actually saw its EPS drop 6.1% per year.

This means it's unlikely the market is judging the company based on earnings growth. Because earnings per share don't seem to match up with the share price, we'll take a look at other metrics instead.

We note that the dividend is higher than it was previously - always nice to see. It could be that the company is reaching maturity and dividend investors are buying for the yield. We'd posit that the revenue growth over the last five years, of 10% per year, would encourage people to invest.

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

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 Shopping Centres Australasia Property Group in this interactive graph of future profit estimates.

What About Dividends?

As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). 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. It's fair to say that the TSR gives a more complete picture for stocks that pay a dividend. As it happens, Shopping Centres Australasia Property Group's TSR for the last 5 years was 104%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!