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The most you can lose on any stock (assuming you don't use leverage) is 100% of your money. But on a lighter note, a good company can see its share price rise well over 100%. One great example is Deere & Company (NYSE:DE) which saw its share price drive 167% higher over five years. It's also good to see the share price up 28% over the last quarter. This could be related to the recent financial results, released recently - you can catch up on the most recent data by reading our company report.
Now it's worth having a look at the company's fundamentals too, because that will help us determine if the long term shareholder return has matched the performance of the underlying business.
See our latest analysis for Deere
While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just underlying business performance. 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.
Over half a decade, Deere managed to grow its earnings per share at 29% a year. This EPS growth is higher than the 22% average annual increase in the share price. Therefore, it seems the market has become relatively pessimistic about the company.
The image below shows how EPS has tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).
It is of course excellent to see how Deere has grown profits over the years, but the future is more important for shareholders. This free interactive report on Deere's balance sheet strength is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.
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. As it happens, Deere's TSR for the last 5 years was 189%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.
A Different Perspective
We're pleased to report that Deere shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 27% over one year. And that does include the dividend. Since the one-year TSR is better than the five-year TSR (the latter coming in at 24% per year), it would seem that the stock's performance has improved in recent times. In the best case scenario, this may hint at some real business momentum, implying that now could be a great time to delve deeper. 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 Deere is showing 1 warning sign in our investment analysis , you should know about...