Helvetia Holding's (VTX:HELN) Stock Price Has Reduced 33% In The Past Year

Passive investing in an index fund is a good way to ensure your own returns roughly match the overall market. While individual stocks can be big winners, plenty more fail to generate satisfactory returns. Unfortunately the Helvetia Holding AG (VTX:HELN) share price slid 33% over twelve months. That's well below the market decline of 2.0%. At least the damage isn't so bad if you look at the last three years, since the stock is down 13% in that time. It's up 1.8% in the last seven days.

Check out our latest analysis for Helvetia Holding

In his essay The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville Warren Buffett described how share prices do not always rationally reflect the value of a business. 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.

Unfortunately Helvetia Holding reported an EPS drop of 41% for the last year. The share price fall of 33% isn't as bad as the reduction in earnings per share. It may have been that the weak EPS was not as bad as some had feared.

The company's earnings per share (over time) is depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).

This free interactive report on Helvetia Holding'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. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. As it happens, Helvetia Holding's TSR for the last year was -30%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!

A Different Perspective

Investors in Helvetia Holding had a tough year, with a total loss of 30% (including dividends), against a market gain of about 2.0%. Even the share prices of good stocks drop sometimes, but we want to see improvements in the fundamental metrics of a business, before getting too interested. On the bright side, long term shareholders have made money, with a gain of 3% per year over half a decade. It could be that the recent sell-off is an opportunity, 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 Helvetia Holding better, we need to consider many other factors. Even so, be aware that Helvetia Holding is showing 2 warning signs in our investment analysis , you should know about...

Of course Helvetia Holding may not be the best stock to buy. So you may wish to see this free collection of growth stocks.

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

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. 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.
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