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There's no doubt that investing in the stock market is a truly brilliant way to build wealth. But not every stock you buy will perform as well as the overall market. For example, the Wabtec Corporation (NYSE:WAB), share price is up over the last year, but its gain of 13% trails the market return. Zooming out, the stock is actually down 5.0% in the last three years.
View our latest analysis for Wabtec
While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just 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 last year, Wabtec actually saw its earnings per share drop 52%.
So we don't think that investors are paying too much attention to EPS. Indeed, when EPS is declining but the share price is up, it often means the market is considering other factors.
We doubt the modest 0.6% dividend yield is doing much to support the share price. However the year on year revenue growth of 61% would help. We do see some companies suppress earnings in order to accelerate revenue growth.
The graphic below depicts how earnings and revenue have changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).
We consider it positive that insiders have made significant purchases in the last year. Even so, future earnings will be far more important to whether current shareholders make money. So we recommend checking out this free report showing consensus forecasts
What about the Total Shareholder Return (TSR)?
We've already covered Wabtec's share price action, but we should also mention its total shareholder return (TSR). Arguably the TSR is a more complete return calculation because it accounts for the value of dividends (as if they were reinvested), along with the hypothetical value of any discounted capital that have been offered to shareholders. Wabtec's TSR of 13% for the year exceeded its share price return, because it has paid dividends.
A Different Perspective
Wabtec shareholders gained a total return of 13% during the year. But that return falls short of the market. But at least that's still a gain! Over five years the TSR has been a reduction of 0.6% per year, over five years. So this might be a sign the business has turned its fortunes around. If you want to research this stock further, the data on insider buying is an obvious place to start. You can click here to see who has been buying shares - and the price they paid.