TOVISLtd's(KOSDAQ:051360) Share Price Is Down 17% Over The Past Five Years.

TOVIS Co.,Ltd (KOSDAQ:051360) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 23% in the last quarter. But if you look at the last five years the returns have not been good. After all, the share price is down 17% in that time, significantly under-performing the market.

Check out our latest analysis for TOVISLtd

While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just underlying business performance. 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.

Looking back five years, both TOVISLtd's share price and EPS declined; the latter at a rate of 55% per year. This was, in part, due to extraordinary items impacting earnings. This fall in the EPS is worse than the 4% compound annual share price fall. So investors might expect EPS to bounce back -- or they may have previously foreseen the EPS decline. With a P/E ratio of 162.20, it's fair to say the market sees a brighter future for the business.

The company's earnings per share (over time) is depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).

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

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. Arguably, the TSR gives a more comprehensive picture of the return generated by a stock. We note that for TOVISLtd the TSR over the last 5 years was -6.1%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!

A Different Perspective

Investors in TOVISLtd had a tough year, with a total loss of 12% (including dividends), against a market gain of about 46%. Even the share prices of good stocks drop sometimes, but we want to see improvements in the fundamental metrics of a business, before getting too interested. Unfortunately, last year's performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 1.2% over the last half decade. We realise that Baron Rothschild has said investors should "buy when there is blood on the streets", but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality business. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand TOVISLtd better, we need to consider many other factors. Even so, be aware that TOVISLtd is showing 5 warning signs in our investment analysis , and 1 of those can't be ignored...

We will like TOVISLtd better if we see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of growing companies with considerable, recent, insider buying.

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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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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