GS Holdings' (KRX:078930) Shareholders Are Down 30% On Their Shares

GS Holdings Corp. (KRX:078930) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 15% in the last quarter. But that cannot eclipse the less-than-impressive returns over the last three years. In fact, the share price is down 30% in the last three years, falling well short of the market return.

See our latest analysis for GS 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 flawed but reasonable way to assess how sentiment around a company has changed is to compare the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price.

GS Holdings saw its share price decline over the three years in which its EPS also dropped, falling to a loss. This was, in part, due to extraordinary items impacting earnings. Due to the loss, it's not easy to use EPS as a reliable guide to the business. However, we can say we'd expect to see a falling share price in this scenario.

The image below shows how EPS has tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).

It might be well worthwhile taking a look at our free report on GS Holdings' earnings, revenue and cash flow.

What About Dividends?

As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). 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. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. In the case of GS Holdings, it has a TSR of -21% for the last 3 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!

A Different Perspective

GS Holdings provided a TSR of 17% over the last twelve months. But that was short of the market average. But at least that's still a gain! Over five years the TSR has been a reduction of 0.7% per year, over five years. It could well be that the business is stabilizing. 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 2 warning signs for GS Holdings you should be aware of, and 1 of them is a bit unpleasant.

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 KR exchanges.

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