The five-year returns for Josef Manner & Comp's (VIE:MAN) shareholders have been , yet its earnings growth was even better

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 Josef Manner & Comp. AG (VIE:MAN) share price is up 14% in the last five years, that's less than the market return. Over the last twelve months the stock price has risen a very respectable 6.2%.

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 Josef Manner & Comp

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, Josef Manner & Comp managed to grow its earnings per share at 23% a year. The EPS growth is more impressive than the yearly share price gain of 3% over the same period. So one could conclude that the broader market has become more cautious towards the stock.

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

This free interactive report on Josef Manner & Comp'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. 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. As it happens, Josef Manner & Comp's TSR for the last 5 years was 20%, 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

Josef Manner & Comp shareholders gained a total return of 7.9% during the year. Unfortunately this falls short of the market return. The silver lining is that the gain was actually better than the average annual return of 4% 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 Josef Manner & Comp better, we need to consider many other factors. To that end, you should learn about the 2 warning signs we've spotted with Josef Manner & Comp (including 1 which doesn't sit too well with us) .

But note: Josef Manner & Comp may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies with past earnings growth (and further growth forecast).

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

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.