Harvard Bioscience (NASDAQ:HBIO) Shareholders Have Enjoyed A 92% Share Price Gain

The main point of investing for the long term is to make money. Better yet, you'd like to see the share price move up more than the market average. Unfortunately for shareholders, while the Harvard Bioscience, Inc. (NASDAQ:HBIO) share price is up 92% in the last five years, that's less than the market return. On a brighter note, more newer shareholders are probably rather content with the 83% share price gain over twelve months.

Check out our latest analysis for Harvard Bioscience

Harvard Bioscience isn't currently profitable, so most analysts would look to revenue growth to get an idea of how fast the underlying business is growing. 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.

In the last 5 years Harvard Bioscience saw its revenue grow at 2.0% per year. Put simply, that growth rate fails to impress. Like its revenue, its share price gained over the period. The increase of 14% per year probably reflects the modest revenue growth. It seems likely that we'll have to zoom in on the data, including profits, to understand if there is an opportunity here.

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

Balance sheet strength is crucial. It might be well worthwhile taking a look at our free report on how its financial position has changed over time.

A Different Perspective

It's good to see that Harvard Bioscience has rewarded shareholders with a total shareholder return of 83% in the last twelve months. That's better than the annualised return of 14% 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 Harvard Bioscience better, we need to consider many other factors. For example, we've discovered 1 warning sign for Harvard Bioscience that you should be aware of before investing here.

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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