Would Shareholders Who Purchased SMU's (SNSE:SMU) Stock Three Years Be Happy With The Share price Today?

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 are likely to be some stocks that fall short of that benchmark. Unfortunately, that's been the case for longer term SMU S.A. (SNSE:SMU) shareholders, since the share price is down 42% in the last three years, falling well short of the market decline of around 16%. But it's up 5.9% in the last week. The buoyant market could have helped drive the share price pop, since stocks are up 3.1% in the same period.

Check out our latest analysis for SMU

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.

During the unfortunate three years of share price decline, SMU actually saw its earnings per share (EPS) improve by 21% per year. This is quite a puzzle, and suggests there might be something temporarily buoying the share price. Or else the company was over-hyped in the past, and so its growth has disappointed.

It's worth taking a look at other metrics, because the EPS growth doesn't seem to match with the falling share price.

We note that the dividend seems healthy enough, so that probably doesn't explain the share price drop. SMU has maintained its top line over three years, so we doubt that has shareholders worried. So it might be worth looking at how revenue growth over time, in greater detail.

You can see how earnings and revenue have changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).

This free interactive report on SMU's balance sheet strength is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

What About Dividends?

As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). 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. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. In the case of SMU, it has a TSR of -39% for the last 3 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!

A Different Perspective

The last twelve months weren't great for SMU shares, which performed worse than the market, costing holders 16%, including dividends. The market shed around 2.7%, no doubt weighing on the stock price. Shareholders have lost 12% per year over the last three years, so the share price drop has become steeper, over the last year; a potential symptom of as yet unsolved challenges. We would be wary of buying into a company with unsolved problems, although some investors will buy into struggling stocks if they believe the price is sufficiently attractive. I find it very interesting to look at share price over the long term as a proxy for business performance. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. Even so, be aware that SMU is showing 4 warning signs in our investment analysis , and 1 of those is concerning...

If you are like me, then you will not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.

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

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