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Ideally, your overall portfolio should beat the market average. But even the best stock picker will only win with some selections. So we wouldn't blame long term MOBI Development Co., Ltd. (HKG:947) shareholders for doubting their decision to hold, with the stock down 26% over a half decade. Unfortunately the share price momentum is still quite negative, with prices down 19% in thirty days.
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View our latest analysis for MOBI Development
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.
MOBI Development 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. Other metrics might give us a better handle on how its value is changing over time.
The modest 1.9% dividend yield is unlikely to be guiding the market view of the stock. The revenue decline of 0.2% isn't too bad. But if the market expected durable top line growth, then that could explain the share price weakness.
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.
If you are thinking of buying or selling MOBI Development stock, you should check out this FREE detailed report on its balance sheet.
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. Arguably, the TSR gives a more comprehensive picture of the return generated by a stock. As it happens, MOBI Development's TSR for the last 5 years was -14%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!
A Different Perspective
While it's never nice to take a loss, MOBI Development shareholders can take comfort that, including dividends, their trailing twelve month loss of 2.8% wasn't as bad as the market loss of around 12%. Of far more concern is the 3.0% p.a. loss served to shareholders over the last five years. While the losses are slowing we doubt many shareholders are happy with the stock. Before spending more time on MOBI Development it might be wise to click here to see if insiders have been buying or selling shares.