Shareholders Of Gulf Medical Projects Company (PJSC) (ADX:GMPC) Must Be Happy With Their 58% Return

By buying an index fund, you can roughly match the market return with ease. But if you pick the right individual stocks, you could make more than that. For example, the Gulf Medical Projects Company (PJSC) (ADX:GMPC) share price is up 30% in the last three years, clearly besting the market return of around 14% (not including dividends). On the other hand, the returns haven't been quite so good recently, with shareholders up just 22% , including dividends .

Check out our latest analysis for Gulf Medical Projects Company (PJSC)

While the efficient markets hypothesis continues to be taught by some, it has been proven that markets are over-reactive dynamic systems, and investors are not always rational. One imperfect but simple way to consider how the market perception of a company has shifted is to compare the change in the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price movement.

During three years of share price growth, Gulf Medical Projects Company (PJSC) achieved compound earnings per share growth of 1.8% per year. In comparison, the 9% per year gain in the share price outpaces the EPS growth. This indicates that the market is feeling more optimistic on the stock, after the last few years of progress. It is quite common to see investors become enamoured with a business, after a few years of solid progress. This favorable sentiment is reflected in its (fairly optimistic) P/E ratio of 46.79.

You can see below how EPS has changed over time (discover the exact values by clicking on the image).

This free interactive report on Gulf Medical Projects Company (PJSC)'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. We note that for Gulf Medical Projects Company (PJSC) the TSR over the last 3 years was 58%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!

A Different Perspective

Gulf Medical Projects Company (PJSC) shareholders are up 22% for the year (even including dividends). Unfortunately this falls short of the market return. The silver lining is that the gain was actually better than the average annual return of 19% per year over five year. This could indicate that the company is winning over new investors, as it pursues its strategy. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Gulf Medical Projects Company (PJSC) better, we need to consider many other factors. To that end, you should learn about the 3 warning signs we've spotted with Gulf Medical Projects Company (PJSC) (including 1 which is potentially serious) .

We will like Gulf Medical Projects Company (PJSC) better if we see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of growing companies with considerable, recent, insider buying.

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on AE exchanges.

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