The simplest way to invest in stocks is to buy exchange traded funds. But if you pick the right individual stocks, you could make more than that. For example, the BriQ Properties Real Estate Investment Company (ATH:BRIQ) share price is up 16% in the last year, clearly besting than the market return of around -9.5% (not including dividends). If it can keep that out-performance up over the long term, investors will do very well! We'll need to follow BriQ Properties Real Estate Investment for a while to get a better sense of its share price trend, since it hasn't been listed for particularly long.
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Check out our latest analysis for BriQ Properties Real Estate Investment
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.
BriQ Properties Real Estate Investment was able to grow EPS by 206% in the last twelve months. It's fair to say that the share price gain of 16% did not keep pace with the EPS growth. So it seems like the market has cooled on BriQ Properties Real Estate Investment, despite the growth. Interesting. This cautious sentiment is reflected in its (fairly low) P/E ratio of 8.70.
The graphic below depicts how EPS has changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).
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..
What About Dividends?
As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). The TSR is a return calculation that accounts for the value of cash dividends (assuming that any dividend received was reinvested) and the calculated value of any discounted capital raisings and spin-offs. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. We note that for BriQ Properties Real Estate Investment the TSR over the last year was 19%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!