The main aim of stock picking is to find the market-beating stocks. But in any portfolio, there will be mixed results between individual stocks. At this point some shareholders may be questioning their investment in Western Areas Limited (ASX:WSA), since the last five years saw the share price fall 32%. And some of the more recent buyers are probably worried, too, with the stock falling 24% in the last year.
See our latest analysis for Western Areas
There is no denying that markets are sometimes efficient, but prices do not always reflect underlying business performance. 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 five years of share price growth, Western Areas moved from a loss to profitability. That would generally be considered a positive, so we are surprised to see the share price is down. Other metrics may better explain the share price move.
The modest 0.9% dividend yield is unlikely to be guiding the market view of the stock. Arguably, the revenue drop of 8.1% a year for half a decade suggests that the company can’t grow in the long term. That could explain the weak share price.
The graphic below shows how revenue and earnings have changed as management guided the business forward. If you want to see cashflow, you can click on the chart.
Western Areas 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.
What About Dividends?
As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). 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. It’s fair to say that the TSR gives a more complete picture for stocks that pay a dividend. We note that for Western Areas the TSR over the last 5 years was -28%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!
A Different Perspective
Investors in Western Areas had a tough year, with a total loss of 23% (including dividends), against a market gain of about 11%. However, keep in mind that even the best stocks will sometimes underperform the market over a twelve month period. Unfortunately, last year’s performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 6.5% over the last half decade. We realise that Buffett has said investors should ‘buy when there is blood on the streets’, but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality businesses. Before spending more time on Western Areas it might be wise to click here to see if insiders have been buying or selling shares.