Investors Who Bought Heritage Foods (NSE:HERITGFOOD) Shares A Year Ago Are Now Up 71%

If you want to compound wealth in the stock market, you can do so by buying an index fund. But investors can boost returns by picking market-beating companies to own shares in. For example, the Heritage Foods Limited (NSE:HERITGFOOD) share price is up 71% in the last year, clearly besting the market return of around 59% (not including dividends). If it can keep that out-performance up over the long term, investors will do very well! Unfortunately the longer term returns are not so good, with the stock falling 25% in the last three years.

See our latest analysis for Heritage Foods

There is no denying that markets are sometimes efficient, but prices do not always reflect underlying business performance. 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.

Heritage Foods went from making a loss to reporting a profit, in the last year.

When a company is just on the edge of profitability it can be well worth considering other metrics in order to more precisely gauge growth (and therefore understand share price movements).

We are skeptical of the suggestion that the 1.1% dividend yield would entice buyers to the stock. Unfortunately Heritage Foods' fell 9.3% over twelve months. So the fundamental metrics don't provide an obvious explanation for the share price gain.

The image below shows how earnings and revenue have tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).

We know that Heritage Foods has improved its bottom line over the last three years, but what does the future have in store? It might be well worthwhile taking a look at our free report on how its financial position has changed over time.

A Different Perspective

It's good to see that Heritage Foods has rewarded shareholders with a total shareholder return of 72% in the last twelve months. That's including the dividend. That's better than the annualised return of 12% over half a decade, implying that the company is doing better recently. In the best case scenario, this may hint at some real business momentum, implying that now could be a great time to delve deeper. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Heritage Foods better, we need to consider many other factors. Even so, be aware that Heritage Foods is showing 1 warning sign in our investment analysis , you should know about...

But note: Heritage Foods 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 IN 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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