If you love investing in stocks you're bound to buy some losers. But the long term shareholders of Clearwater Seafoods Incorporated (TSE:CLR) have had an unfortunate run in the last three years. Regrettably, they have had to cope with a 62% drop in the share price over that period. Unfortunately the share price momentum is still quite negative, with prices down 12% in thirty days.
View our latest analysis for Clearwater Seafoods
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. 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.
Clearwater Seafoods became profitable within the last five years. That would generally be considered a positive, so we are surprised to see the share price is down. So given the share price is down it's worth checking some other metrics too.
The company has kept revenue pretty healthy over the last three years, so we doubt that explains the falling share price. We're not entirely sure why the share price is dropped, but it does seem likely investors have become less optimistic about the business.
You can see how earnings and revenue have changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).
We know that Clearwater Seafoods has improved its bottom line lately, but what does the future have in store? So it makes a lot of sense to check out what analysts think Clearwater Seafoods will earn in the future (free profit forecasts).
What About Dividends?
It is important to consider the total shareholder return, as well as the share price return, for any given stock. Whereas the share price return only reflects the change in the share price, the TSR includes the value of dividends (assuming they were reinvested) and the benefit of any discounted capital raising or spin-off. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. As it happens, Clearwater Seafoods's TSR for the last 3 years was -58%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!
A Different Perspective
While the broader market gained around 4.6% in the last year, Clearwater Seafoods shareholders lost 2.4% (even including dividends) . However, keep in mind that even the best stocks will sometimes underperform the market over a twelve month period. However, the loss over the last year isn't as bad as the 12% per annum loss investors have suffered over the last half decade. We'd need to see some sustained improvements in the key metrics before we could muster much enthusiasm. Most investors take the time to check the data on insider transactions. You can click here to see if insiders have been buying or selling.