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It's easy to match the overall market return by buying an index fund. While individual stocks can be big winners, plenty more fail to generate satisfactory returns. For example, the Stride Stapled Group (NZSE:SPG) share price is down 25% in the last year. That contrasts poorly with the market return of 5.3%. Longer term shareholders haven't suffered as badly, since the stock is down a comparatively less painful 13% in three years. The share price has dropped 35% in three months.
View our latest analysis for Stride Stapled Group
There is no denying that markets are sometimes efficient, but prices do not always reflect underlying business performance. 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).
Unfortunately Stride Stapled Group reported an EPS drop of 28% for the last year. We note that the 25% share price drop is very close to the EPS drop. So it seems that the market sentiment has not changed much, despite the weak results. Rather, the share price has approximately tracked EPS growth.
The company's earnings per share (over time) is depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).
Before buying or selling a stock, we always recommend a close examination of historic growth trends, available here.
What About Dividends?
As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). 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. It's fair to say that the TSR gives a more complete picture for stocks that pay a dividend. In the case of Stride Stapled Group, it has a TSR of -21% for the last year. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!
A Different Perspective
The last twelve months weren't great for Stride Stapled Group shares, which cost holders 21% , including dividends , while the market was up about 5.3%. Of course the long term matters more than the short term, and even great stocks will sometimes have a poor year. Fortunately the longer term story is brighter, with total returns averaging about 1.2% per year over three years. The recent sell-off could be an opportunity if the business remains sound, 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 Stride Stapled Group better, we need to consider many other factors. For instance, we've identified 5 warning signs for Stride Stapled Group (2 can't be ignored) that you should be aware of.