Citizens Holding's (NASDAQ:CIZN) Stock Price Has Reduced 15% In The Past Three Years

As an investor its worth striving to ensure your overall portfolio beats the market average. But if you try your hand at stock picking, your risk returning less than the market. Unfortunately, that's been the case for longer term Citizens Holding Company (NASDAQ:CIZN) shareholders, since the share price is down 15% in the last three years, falling well short of the market return of around 46%. Unhappily, the share price slid 8.7% in the last week.

See our latest analysis for Citizens Holding

While the efficient markets hypothesis continues to be taught by some, it has been proven that markets are over-reactive dynamic systems, and investors are not always rational. By comparing earnings per share (EPS) and share price changes over time, we can get a feel for how investor attitudes to a company have morphed over time.

During the three years that the share price fell, Citizens Holding's earnings per share (EPS) dropped by 3.5% each year. The share price decline of 5% is actually steeper than the EPS slippage. So it's likely that the EPS decline has disappointed the market, leaving investors hesitant to buy.

The graphic below depicts how EPS has changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).

This free interactive report on Citizens Holding's earnings, revenue and cash flow is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

What About Dividends?

As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). The TSR is a return calculation that accounts for the value of cash dividends (assuming that any dividend received was reinvested) and the calculated value of any discounted capital raisings and spin-offs. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. We note that for Citizens Holding the TSR over the last 3 years was -3.1%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!

A Different Perspective

Citizens Holding shareholders are down 7.8% for the year (even including dividends), but the market itself is up 22%. 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. Longer term investors wouldn't be so upset, since they would have made 2%, each year, over five years. It could be that the recent sell-off is an opportunity, so it may be worth checking the fundamental data for signs of a long term growth trend. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Citizens Holding better, we need to consider many other factors. Even so, be aware that Citizens Holding is showing 1 warning sign in our investment analysis , you should know about...

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