Amidst increasing losses, Investors bid up Sunrun (NASDAQ:RUN) 6.1% this past week

Sunrun Inc. (NASDAQ:RUN) shareholders will doubtless be very grateful to see the share price up 64% in the last quarter. But over the last three years we've seen a quite serious decline. In that time, the share price dropped 56%. So it's good to see it climbing back up. Perhaps the company has turned over a new leaf.

While the last three years has been tough for Sunrun shareholders, this past week has shown signs of promise. So let's look at the longer term fundamentals and see if they've been the driver of the negative returns.

Check out our latest analysis for Sunrun

Sunrun wasn't profitable in the last twelve months, it is unlikely we'll see a strong correlation between its share price and its earnings per share (EPS). Arguably revenue is our next best option. Generally speaking, companies without profits are expected to grow revenue every year, and at a good clip. That's because fast revenue growth can be easily extrapolated to forecast profits, often of considerable size.

Over three years, Sunrun grew revenue at 15% per year. That's a pretty good rate of top-line growth. So some shareholders would be frustrated with the compound loss of 16% per year. The market must have had really high expectations to be disappointed with this progress. It would be well worth taking a closer look at the company, to determine growth trends (and balance sheet strength).

You can see how earnings and revenue have changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).

Sunrun is well known by investors, and plenty of clever analysts have tried to predict the future profit levels. Given we have quite a good number of analyst forecasts, it might be well worth checking out this free chart depicting consensus estimates.

A Different Perspective

It's good to see that Sunrun has rewarded shareholders with a total shareholder return of 40% in the last twelve months. That gain is better than the annual TSR over five years, which is 6%. Therefore it seems like sentiment around the company has been positive lately. Someone with an optimistic perspective could view the recent improvement in TSR as indicating that the business itself is getting better with time. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Sunrun better, we need to consider many other factors. Even so, be aware that Sunrun is showing 5 warning signs in our investment analysis , and 1 of those is a bit unpleasant...

If you like to buy stocks alongside management, then you might just love this free list of companies. (Hint: many of them are unnoticed AND have attractive valuation).

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

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. 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.