Reflecting on Rolls-Royce Holdings' (LON:RR.) Share Price Returns Over The Last Three Years

Every investor on earth makes bad calls sometimes. But really bad investments should be rare. So spare a thought for the long term shareholders of Rolls-Royce Holdings plc (LON:RR.); the share price is down a whopping 91% in the last three years. That'd be enough to cause even the strongest minds some disquiet. The more recent news is of little comfort, with the share price down 89% in a year. The falls have accelerated recently, with the share price down 67% in the last three months.

We really feel for shareholders in this scenario. It's a good reminder of the importance of diversification, and it's worth keeping in mind there's more to life than money, anyway.

Check out our latest analysis for Rolls-Royce Holdings

Rolls-Royce Holdings 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 expect to see good revenue growth. That's because fast revenue growth can be easily extrapolated to forecast profits, often of considerable size.

Over three years, Rolls-Royce Holdings grew revenue at 1.4% per year. Given it's losing money in pursuit of growth, we are not really impressed with that. Nonetheless, it's fair to say the rapidly declining share price (down 24%, compound, over three years) suggests the market is very disappointed with this level of growth. We generally don't try to 'catch the falling knife'. Of course, revenue growth is nice but generally speaking the lower the profits, the riskier the business - and this business isn't making steady profits.

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

Rolls-Royce Holdings is well known by investors, and plenty of clever analysts have tried to predict the future profit levels. So we recommend checking out this free report showing consensus forecasts

What about the Total Shareholder Return (TSR)?

We've already covered Rolls-Royce Holdings' share price action, but we should also mention its total shareholder return (TSR). 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. Rolls-Royce Holdings' TSR of was a loss of 74% for the 3 years. That wasn't as bad as its share price return, because it has paid dividends.

A Different Perspective

While the broader market lost about 14% in the twelve months, Rolls-Royce Holdings shareholders did even worse, losing 69%. 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. Regrettably, last year's performance caps off a bad run, with the shareholders facing a total loss of 10% per year over five years. Generally speaking long term share price weakness can be a bad sign, though contrarian investors might want to research the stock in hope of a turnaround. 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. For instance, we've identified 2 warning signs for Rolls-Royce Holdings (1 makes us a bit uncomfortable) that you should be aware of.

For those who like to find winning investments this free list of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket.

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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