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In order to justify the effort of selecting individual stocks, it's worth striving to beat the returns from a market index fund. But in any portfolio, there will be mixed results between individual stocks. At this point some shareholders may be questioning their investment in Vtech Holdings Limited (HKG:303), since the last five years saw the share price fall 27%. But it's up 5.3% in the last week.
See our latest analysis for Vtech Holdings
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).
During the five years over which the share price declined, Vtech Holdings's earnings per share (EPS) dropped by 3.5% each year. This reduction in EPS is less than the 6.0% annual reduction in the share price. This implies that the market was previously too optimistic about the stock.
You can see how EPS has changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).
Dive deeper into Vtech Holdings's key metrics by checking this interactive graph of Vtech Holdings's earnings, revenue and cash flow.
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. It's fair to say that the TSR gives a more complete picture for stocks that pay a dividend. In the case of Vtech Holdings, it has a TSR of -2.3% for the last 5 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.
A Different Perspective
Vtech Holdings shareholders are down 17% for the year (even including dividends) , but the market itself is up 4.1%. However, keep in mind that even the best stocks will sometimes underperform the market over a twelve month period. Unfortunately, last year's performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 0.5% over the last half decade. We realise that Buffett has said investors should 'buy when there is blood on the streets', but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality businesses. Keeping this in mind, a solid next step might be to take a look at Vtech Holdings's dividend track record. This free interactive graph is a great place to start.