Shareholders Of Le Young Construction (GTSM:2599) Must Be Happy With Their 198% Total Return

If you buy and hold a stock for many years, you'd hope to be making a profit. Better yet, you'd like to see the share price move up more than the market average. Unfortunately for shareholders, while the Le Young Construction Co., Ltd. (GTSM:2599) share price is up 46% in the last five years, that's less than the market return. However, if you include the dividends then the return is market beating. Zooming in, the stock is actually down 18% in the last year.

See our latest analysis for Le Young Construction

To quote Buffett, 'Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace...' 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.

Le Young Construction's earnings per share are down 11% per year, despite strong share price performance over five years.

Essentially, it doesn't seem likely that investors are focused on EPS. 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.

In fact, the dividend has increased over time, which is a positive. Maybe dividend investors have helped support the share price. We'd posit that the revenue growth over the last five years, of 12% per year, would encourage people to invest.

The company's revenue and earnings (over time) are depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).

You can see how its balance sheet has strengthened (or weakened) over time in this free interactive graphic.

What About Dividends?

When looking at investment returns, it is important to consider the difference between total shareholder return (TSR) and share price return. The TSR incorporates the value of any spin-offs or discounted capital raisings, along with any dividends, based on the assumption that the dividends are reinvested. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. In the case of Le Young Construction, it has a TSR of 198% for the last 5 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.

A Different Perspective

While the broader market gained around 23% in the last year, Le Young Construction shareholders lost 11% (even including dividends). 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. On the bright side, long term shareholders have made money, with a gain of 24% per year over half a decade. If the fundamental data continues to indicate long term sustainable growth, the current sell-off could be an opportunity worth considering. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Le Young Construction better, we need to consider many other factors. Like risks, for instance. Every company has them, and we've spotted 3 warning signs for Le Young Construction (of which 1 is significant!) 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 TW exchanges.

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