Rank Group's (LON:RNK) earnings have declined over five years, contributing to shareholders 29% loss

The Rank Group Plc (LON:RNK) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 22% in the last month. But over the last half decade, the stock has not performed well. In fact, the share price is down 30%, which falls well short of the return you could get by buying an index fund.

While the stock has risen 11% in the past week but long term shareholders are still in the red, let's see what the fundamentals can tell us.

We check all companies for important risks. See what we found for Rank Group in our free report.

To quote Buffett, 'Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace...' One way to examine how market sentiment has changed over time is to look at the interaction between a company's share price and its earnings per share (EPS).

During the five years over which the share price declined, Rank Group's earnings per share (EPS) dropped by 11% each year. This fall in the EPS is worse than the 7% compound annual share price fall. So investors might expect EPS to bounce back -- or they may have previously foreseen the EPS decline.

You can see below how EPS has changed over time (discover the exact values by clicking on the image).

We consider it positive that insiders have made significant purchases in the last year. Even so, future earnings will be far more important to whether current shareholders make money. Before buying or selling a stock, we always recommend a close examination of historic growth trends, available here..

A Different Perspective

We're pleased to report that Rank Group shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 9.9% over one year. That's including the dividend. That certainly beats the loss of about 5% per year over the last half decade. We generally put more weight on the long term performance over the short term, but the recent improvement could hint at a (positive) inflection point within the business. If you want to research this stock further, the data on insider buying is an obvious place to start. You can click here to see who has been buying shares - and the price they paid.

There are plenty of other companies that have insiders buying up shares. You probably do not want to miss this free list of undervalued small cap 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 British 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.