How Much Did Tuan Sing Holdings'(SGX:T24) Shareholders Earn From Share Price Movements Over The Last Three Years?

Many investors define successful investing as beating the market average over the long term. But its virtually certain that sometimes you will buy stocks that fall short of the market average returns. Unfortunately, that's been the case for longer term Tuan Sing Holdings Limited (SGX:T24) shareholders, since the share price is down 31% in the last three years, falling well short of the market return of around 58%. It's up 1.5% in the last seven days.

See our latest analysis for Tuan Sing Holdings

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

During the unfortunate three years of share price decline, Tuan Sing Holdings actually saw its earnings per share (EPS) improve by 16% per year. Given the share price reaction, one might suspect that EPS is not a good guide to the business performance during the period (perhaps due to a one-off loss or gain). Alternatively, growth expectations may have been unreasonable in the past.

Since the change in EPS doesn't seem to correlate with the change in share price, it's worth taking a look at other metrics.

With a rather small yield of just 1.8% we doubt that the stock's share price is based on its dividend. We think that the revenue decline over three years, at a rate of 9.5% per year, probably had some shareholders looking to sell. After all, if revenue keeps shrinking, it may be difficult to find earnings growth in the future.

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

This free interactive report on Tuan Sing Holdings' balance sheet strength is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

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. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. We note that for Tuan Sing Holdings the TSR over the last 3 years was -26%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.

A Different Perspective

Tuan Sing Holdings provided a TSR of 5.7% over the last twelve months. But that return falls short of the market. On the bright side, that's still a gain, and it's actually better than the average return of 5% over half a decade It is possible that returns will improve along with the business fundamentals. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Tuan Sing Holdings better, we need to consider many other factors. For example, we've discovered 4 warning signs for Tuan Sing Holdings (2 shouldn't be ignored!) that you should be aware of before investing here.

If you would prefer to check out another company -- one with potentially superior financials -- then do not miss this free list of companies that have proven they can grow earnings.

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

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