Shareholders Are Raving About How The Sopheon (LON:SPE) Share Price Increased 807%

Long term investing can be life changing when you buy and hold the truly great businesses. And we've seen some truly amazing gains over the years. For example, the Sopheon plc (LON:SPE) share price is up a whopping 807% in the last half decade, a handsome return for long term holders. This just goes to show the value creation that some businesses can achieve. Also pleasing for shareholders was the 11% gain in the last three months. But this could be related to the strong market, which is up 5.3% in the last three months.

We love happy stories like this one. The company should be really proud of that performance!

See our latest analysis for Sopheon

While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just underlying business performance. 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 last half decade, Sopheon became profitable. That kind of transition can be an inflection point that justifies a strong share price gain, just as we have seen here.

The graphic below depicts how EPS has changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).

Before buying or selling a stock, we always recommend a close examination of historic growth trends, available here.

What About Dividends?

It is important to consider the total shareholder return, as well as the share price return, for any given stock. The TSR incorporates the value of any spin-offs or discounted capital raisings, along with any dividends, based on the assumption that the dividends are reinvested. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. We note that for Sopheon the TSR over the last 5 years was 816%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.

A Different Perspective

It's good to see that Sopheon has rewarded shareholders with a total shareholder return of 62% in the last twelve months. That's including the dividend. Since the one-year TSR is better than the five-year TSR (the latter coming in at 56% per year), it would seem that the stock's performance has improved in recent times. In the best case scenario, this may hint at some real business momentum, implying that now could be a great time to delve deeper. 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. Case in point: We've spotted 3 warning signs for Sopheon you should be aware of.

Of course Sopheon 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 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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