Would Shareholders Who Purchased Standard Chartered's(LON:STAN) Stock Five 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 every investor is virtually certain to have both over-performing and under-performing stocks. At this point some shareholders may be questioning their investment in Standard Chartered PLC (LON:STAN), since the last five years saw the share price fall 54%. And we doubt long term believers are the only worried holders, since the stock price has declined 36% over the last twelve months. Even worse, it's down 8.1% in about a month, which isn't fun at all. This could be related to the recent financial results - you can catch up on the most recent data by reading our company report.

View our latest analysis for Standard Chartered

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 imperfect but simple way to consider how the market perception of a company has shifted is to compare the change in the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price movement.

During the five years over which the share price declined, Standard Chartered's earnings per share (EPS) dropped by 6.5% each year. This reduction in EPS is less than the 14% annual reduction in the share price. So it seems the market was too confident about the business, in the past. The low P/E ratio of 11.74 further reflects this reticence.

You can see how EPS has changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).

It's probably worth noting we've seen significant insider buying in the last quarter, which we consider a positive. On the other hand, we think the revenue and earnings trends are much more meaningful measures of the business. Dive deeper into the earnings by checking this interactive graph of Standard Chartered's earnings, revenue and cash flow.

What about the Total Shareholder Return (TSR)?

We'd be remiss not to mention the difference between Standard Chartered's total shareholder return (TSR) and its share price return. Arguably the TSR is a more complete return calculation because it accounts for the value of dividends (as if they were reinvested), along with the hypothetical value of any discounted capital that have been offered to shareholders. Its history of dividend payouts mean that Standard Chartered's TSR, which was a 49% drop over the last 5 years, was not as bad as the share price return.

A Different Perspective

While the broader market lost about 8.8% in the twelve months, Standard Chartered shareholders did even worse, losing 36%. Having said that, it's inevitable that some stocks will be oversold in a falling market. The key is to keep your eyes on the fundamental developments. Unfortunately, last year's performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 8.3% 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 is all well and good that insiders have been buying shares, but we suggest you check here to see what price insiders were buying at.

If you like to buy stocks alongside management, then you might just love this free list of companies. (Hint: insiders have been buying them).

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