Can You Imagine How AECOM's (NYSE:ACM) Shareholders Feel About The 92% Share Price Increase?

By buying an index fund, investors can approximate the average market return. But if you choose individual stocks with prowess, you can make superior returns. Just take a look at AECOM (NYSE:ACM), which is up 92%, over three years, soundly beating the market return of 54% (not including dividends). On the other hand, the returns haven't been quite so good recently, with shareholders up just 71%.

See our latest analysis for AECOM

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 imperfect but simple way to consider how the market perception of a company has shifted is to compare the change in the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price movement.

AECOM was able to grow its EPS at 14% per year over three years, sending the share price higher. This EPS growth is lower than the 24% average annual increase in the share price. This indicates that the market is feeling more optimistic on the stock, after the last few years of progress. It is quite common to see investors become enamoured with a business, after a few years of solid progress.

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

We consider it positive that insiders have made significant purchases in the last year. Even so, future earnings will be far more important to whether current shareholders make money. Before buying or selling a stock, we always recommend a close examination of historic growth trends, available here..

A Different Perspective

It's good to see that AECOM has rewarded shareholders with a total shareholder return of 71% in the last twelve months. That's better than the annualised return of 12% over half a decade, implying that the company is doing better recently. 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 AECOM better, we need to consider many other factors. Case in point: We've spotted 2 warning signs for AECOM you should be aware of.

AECOM is not the only stock that insiders are buying. 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 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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