Caisse Régionale de Crédit Agricole Mutuel Sud Rhône Alpes (EPA:CRSU) sheds €55m, company earnings and investor returns have been trending downwards for past five years

Ideally, your overall portfolio should beat the market average. But in any portfolio, there will be mixed results between individual stocks. At this point some shareholders may be questioning their investment in Caisse Régionale de Crédit Agricole Mutuel Sud Rhône Alpes (EPA:CRSU), since the last five years saw the share price fall 54%. The falls have accelerated recently, with the share price down 15% in the last three months.

Given the past week has been tough on shareholders, let's investigate the fundamentals and see what we can learn.

Check out our latest analysis for Caisse Régionale de Crédit Agricole Mutuel Sud Rhône Alpes

While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just underlying business performance. By comparing earnings per share (EPS) and share price changes over time, we can get a feel for how investor attitudes to a company have morphed over time.

During the five years over which the share price declined, Caisse Régionale de Crédit Agricole Mutuel Sud Rhône Alpes' earnings per share (EPS) dropped by 4.1% each year. Readers should note that the share price has fallen faster than the EPS, at a rate of 14% per year, over the period. So it seems the market was too confident about the business, in the past. The less favorable sentiment is reflected in its current P/E ratio of 5.20.

The image below shows how EPS has tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).

This free interactive report on Caisse Régionale de Crédit Agricole Mutuel Sud Rhône Alpes' 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. In the case of Caisse Régionale de Crédit Agricole Mutuel Sud Rhône Alpes, it has a TSR of -44% for the last 5 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!

A Different Perspective

While the broader market gained around 15% in the last year, Caisse Régionale de Crédit Agricole Mutuel Sud Rhône Alpes shareholders lost 5.1% (even including dividends). However, keep in mind that even the best stocks will sometimes underperform the market over a twelve month period. Unfortunately, longer term shareholders are suffering worse, given the loss of 8% doled out over the last five years. We'd need to see some sustained improvements in the key metrics before we could muster much enthusiasm. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Caisse Régionale de Crédit Agricole Mutuel Sud Rhône Alpes better, we need to consider many other factors. Even so, be aware that Caisse Régionale de Crédit Agricole Mutuel Sud Rhône Alpes is showing 1 warning sign in our investment analysis , you should know about...

We will like Caisse Régionale de Crédit Agricole Mutuel Sud Rhône Alpes 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 French 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.