While Splunk Inc. (NASDAQ:SPLK) shareholders are probably generally happy, the stock hasn't had particularly good run recently, with the share price falling 15% in the last quarter. While that's not great, the returns over five years have been decent. It's good to see the share price is up 75% in that time, better than its market return of 72%. Unfortunately not all shareholders will have held it for the long term, so spare a thought for those caught in the 26% decline over the last twelve months.

On the back of a solid 7-day performance, let's check what role the company's fundamentals have played in driving long term shareholder returns.

View our latest analysis for Splunk

Splunk isn't currently profitable, so most analysts would look to revenue growth to get an idea of how fast the underlying business is growing. When a company doesn't make profits, we'd generally expect to see good revenue growth. As you can imagine, fast revenue growth, when maintained, often leads to fast profit growth.

In the last 5 years Splunk saw its revenue grow at 17% per year. That's well above most pre-profit companies. It's good to see that the stock has 12%, but not entirely surprising given revenue shows strong growth. If you think there could be more growth to come, now might be the time to take a close look at Splunk. Of course, you'll have to research the business more fully to figure out if this is an attractive opportunity.

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

Splunk is a well known stock, with plenty of analyst coverage, suggesting some visibility into future growth. So it makes a lot of sense to check out what analysts think Splunk will earn in the future (free analyst consensus estimates)

A Different Perspective

We regret to report that Splunk shareholders are down 26% for the year. Unfortunately, that's worse than the broader market decline of 15%. Having said that, it's inevitable that some stocks will be oversold in a falling market. The key is to keep your eyes on the fundamental developments. Longer term investors wouldn't be so upset, since they would have made 12%, each year, over five years. If the fundamental data continues to indicate long term sustainable growth, the current sell-off could be an opportunity worth considering. 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. For example, we've discovered 2 warning signs for Splunk that you should be aware of before investing here.