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While Scully Royalty Ltd. (NYSE:SRL) shareholders are probably generally happy, the stock hasn't had particularly good run recently, with the share price falling 20% in the last quarter. But that doesn't change the fact that the returns over the last half decade have been spectacular. To be precise, the stock price is 427% higher than it was five years ago, a wonderful performance by any measure. So we don't think the recent decline in the share price means its story is a sad one. The most important thing for savvy investors to consider is whether the underlying business can justify the share price gain. While the long term returns are impressive, we do have some sympathy for those who bought more recently, given the 33% drop, in the last year.
So let's investigate and see if the longer term performance of the company has been in line with the underlying business' progress.
View our latest analysis for Scully Royalty
There is no denying that markets are sometimes efficient, but prices do not always reflect underlying business performance. One flawed but reasonable way to assess how sentiment around a company has changed is to compare the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price.
During the five years of share price growth, Scully Royalty moved from a loss to profitability. Sometimes, the start of profitability is a major inflection point that can signal fast earnings growth to come, which in turn justifies very strong share price gains.
The image below shows how EPS has tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).
This free interactive report on Scully Royalty's earnings, revenue and cash flow is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.
What About Dividends?
It is important to consider the total shareholder return, as well as the share price return, for any given stock. 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 Scully Royalty the TSR over the last 5 years was 452%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.
A Different Perspective
While the broader market lost about 20% in the twelve months, Scully Royalty shareholders did even worse, losing 30% (even including dividends). However, it could simply be that the share price has been impacted by broader market jitters. It might be worth keeping an eye on the fundamentals, in case there's a good opportunity. On the bright side, long term shareholders have made money, with a gain of 41% per year over half a decade. It could be that the recent sell-off is an opportunity, so it may be worth checking the fundamental data for signs of a long term growth trend. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Scully Royalty better, we need to consider many other factors. To that end, you should be aware of the 2 warning signs we've spotted with Scully Royalty .