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CVS Health Corporation (NYSE:CVS) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 23% in the last quarter. But that doesn't change the fact that the returns over the last three years have been less than pleasing. Truth be told the share price declined 36% in three years and that return, Dear Reader, falls short of what you could have got from passive investing with an index fund.

If the past week is anything to go by, investor sentiment for CVS Health isn't positive, so let's see if there's a mismatch between fundamentals and the share price.

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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 way to examine how market sentiment has changed over time is to look at the interaction between a company's share price and its earnings per share (EPS).

During the three years that the share price fell, CVS Health's earnings per share (EPS) dropped by 16% each year. This fall in EPS isn't far from the rate of share price decline, which was 14% per year. That suggests that the market sentiment around the company hasn't changed much over that time, despite the disappointment. In this case, it seems that the EPS is guiding the share price.

You can see how EPS has changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).

It's good to see that there was some significant insider buying in the last three months. That's a positive. That said, we think earnings and revenue growth trends are even more important factors to consider. This free interactive report on CVS Health'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. The TSR incorporates the value of any spin-offs or discounted capital raisings, along with any dividends, based on the assumption that the dividends are reinvested. It's fair to say that the TSR gives a more complete picture for stocks that pay a dividend. In the case of CVS Health, it has a TSR of -29% for the last 3 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.