Even after rising 15% this past week, Transgene (EPA:TNG) shareholders are still down 51% over the past three years

It's nice to see the Transgene SA (EPA:TNG) share price up 15% in a week. Meanwhile over the last three years the stock has dropped hard. Tragically, the share price declined 51% in that time. So it is really good to see an improvement. The rise has some hopeful, but turnarounds are often precarious.

While the stock has risen 15% in the past week but long term shareholders are still in the red, let's see what the fundamentals can tell us.

View our latest analysis for Transgene

Transgene isn't currently profitable, so most analysts would look to revenue growth to get an idea of how fast the underlying business is growing. When a company doesn't make profits, we'd generally hope to see good revenue growth. That's because it's hard to be confident a company will be sustainable if revenue growth is negligible, and it never makes a profit.

In the last three years Transgene saw its revenue shrink by 8.3% per year. That's not what investors generally want to see. The share price decline of 15% compound, over three years, is understandable given the company doesn't have profits to boast of, and revenue is moving in the wrong direction. Of course, it's the future that will determine whether today's price is a good one. We'd be pretty wary of this one until it makes a profit, because we don't specialize in finding turnaround situations.

The graphic below depicts how earnings and revenue have changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).

If you are thinking of buying or selling Transgene stock, you should check out this FREE detailed report on its balance sheet.

A Different Perspective

Transgene shareholders are down 31% for the year, but the market itself is up 1.6%. 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. Unfortunately, last year's performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 6% over the last half decade. We realise that Baron Rothschild has said investors should "buy when there is blood on the streets", but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality business. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Transgene better, we need to consider many other factors. Even so, be aware that Transgene is showing 4 warning signs in our investment analysis , and 2 of those are significant...

Of course Transgene 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 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.