Shareholders 17% loss in Goldlion Holdings (HKG:533) partly attributable to the company's decline in earnings over past five years

Over the last month the Goldlion Holdings Limited (HKG:533) has been much stronger than before, rebounding by 67%. But if you look at the last five years the returns have not been good. In fact, the share price is down 41%, which falls well short of the return you could get by buying an index fund.

The recent uptick of 14% could be a positive sign of things to come, so let's take a look at historical fundamentals.

Check out our latest analysis for Goldlion Holdings

To paraphrase Benjamin Graham: Over the short term the market is a voting machine, but over the long term it's a weighing machine. 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).

Looking back five years, both Goldlion Holdings' share price and EPS declined; the latter at a rate of 23% per year. This fall in the EPS is worse than the 10% 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 how EPS has changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).

This free interactive report on Goldlion Holdings' earnings, revenue and cash flow is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

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 is a return calculation that accounts for the value of cash dividends (assuming that any dividend received was reinvested) and the calculated value of any discounted capital raisings and spin-offs. It's fair to say that the TSR gives a more complete picture for stocks that pay a dividend. As it happens, Goldlion Holdings' TSR for the last 5 years was -17%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!

A Different Perspective

It's nice to see that Goldlion Holdings shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 38% over the last year. And that does include the dividend. Notably the five-year annualised TSR loss of 3% per year compares very unfavourably with the recent share price performance. 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. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Goldlion Holdings better, we need to consider many other factors. Like risks, for instance. Every company has them, and we've spotted 4 warning signs for Goldlion Holdings (of which 1 is potentially serious!) you should know about.

But note: Goldlion Holdings may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies with past earnings growth (and further growth forecast).

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