If You Had Bought Anjani Portland Cement (NSE:APCL) Shares A Year Ago You'd Have Earned 46% Returns

These days it's easy to simply buy an index fund, and your returns should (roughly) match the market. But investors can boost returns by picking market-beating companies to own shares in. For example, the Anjani Portland Cement Limited (NSE:APCL) share price is up 46% in the last year, clearly besting the market return of around 13% (not including dividends). That's a solid performance by our standards! Unfortunately the longer term returns are not so good, with the stock falling 13% in the last three years.

View our latest analysis for Anjani Portland Cement

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).

Anjani Portland Cement was able to grow EPS by 35% in the last twelve months. The share price gain of 46% certainly outpaced the EPS growth. So it's fair to assume the market has a higher opinion of the business than it a year ago.

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

It might be well worthwhile taking a look at our free report on Anjani Portland Cement's earnings, revenue and cash flow.

What About Dividends?

When looking at investment returns, it is important to consider the difference between total shareholder return (TSR) and share price return. Whereas the share price return only reflects the change in the share price, the TSR includes the value of dividends (assuming they were reinvested) and the benefit of any discounted capital raising or spin-off. It's fair to say that the TSR gives a more complete picture for stocks that pay a dividend. In the case of Anjani Portland Cement, it has a TSR of 51% for the last year. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!

A Different Perspective

Pleasingly, Anjani Portland Cement's total shareholder return last year was 51%. That's including the dividend. What is absolutely clear is that is far preferable to the dismal 2.5% average annual loss suffered over the last three years. We're generally cautious about putting too much weigh on shorter term data, but the recent improvement is definitely a positive. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Anjani Portland Cement better, we need to consider many other factors. Even so, be aware that Anjani Portland Cement is showing 2 warning signs in our investment analysis , you should know about...

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 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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