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Manaksia Limited (NSE:MANAKSIA) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 14% in the last month. But don't envy holders -- looking back over 5 years the returns have been really bad. The share price has failed to impress anyone , down a sizable 62% during that time. So we're hesitant to put much weight behind the short term increase. We'd err towards caution given the long term under-performance.
View our latest analysis for Manaksia
To paraphrase Benjamin Graham: Over the short term the market is a voting machine, but over the long term it's a weighing machine. One flawed but reasonable way to assess how sentiment around a company has changed is to compare the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price.
Looking back five years, both Manaksia's share price and EPS declined; the latter at a rate of 15% per year. This change in EPS is reasonably close to the 18% average annual decrease in the share price. That suggests that the market sentiment around the company hasn't changed much over that time. Rather, the share price change has reflected changes in earnings per share.
You can see below how EPS has changed over time (discover the exact values by clicking on the image).
This free interactive report on Manaksia's earnings, revenue and cash flow is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.
What About Dividends?
It is important to consider the total shareholder return, as well as the share price return, for any given stock. 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. It's fair to say that the TSR gives a more complete picture for stocks that pay a dividend. As it happens, Manaksia's TSR for the last 5 years was -54%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.
A Different Perspective
Investors in Manaksia had a tough year, with a total loss of 1.4% (including dividends) , against a market gain of about 1.2%. Even the share prices of good stocks drop sometimes, but we want to see improvements in the fundamental metrics of a business, before getting too interested. However, the loss over the last year isn't as bad as the 15% per annum loss investors have suffered over the last half decade. We would want clear information suggesting the company will grow, before taking the view that the share price will stabilize. Before forming an opinion on Manaksia you might want to consider the cold hard cash it pays as a dividend. This free chart tracks its dividend over time.