If you buy and hold a stock for many years, you'd hope to be making a profit. Better yet, you'd like to see the share price move up more than the market average. Unfortunately for shareholders, while the Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE:TSN) share price is up 39% in the last five years, that's less than the market return. However, more recent buyers should be happy with the increase of 23% over the last year.

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.

Check out our latest analysis for Tyson Foods

While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just 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.

Over half a decade, Tyson Foods managed to grow its earnings per share at 18% a year. The EPS growth is more impressive than the yearly share price gain of 7% over the same period. Therefore, it seems the market has become relatively pessimistic about the company. This cautious sentiment is reflected in its (fairly low) P/E ratio of 7.85.

The graphic below depicts how EPS has changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).

We know that Tyson Foods has improved its bottom line lately, but is it going to grow revenue? Check if analysts think Tyson Foods will grow revenue in the future.

What About Dividends?

When looking at investment returns, it is important to consider the difference between total shareholder return (TSR) and share price return. The TSR is a return calculation that accounts for the value of cash dividends (assuming that any dividend received was reinvested) and the calculated value of any discounted capital raisings and spin-offs. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. As it happens, Tyson Foods' TSR for the last 5 years was 55%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!

A Different Perspective

It's good to see that Tyson Foods has rewarded shareholders with a total shareholder return of 26% in the last twelve months. Of course, that includes the dividend. That's better than the annualised return of 9% over half a decade, implying that the company is doing better recently. 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. Take risks, for example - Tyson Foods has 2 warning signs (and 1 which makes us a bit uncomfortable) we think you should know about.