The main aim of stock picking is to find the market-beating stocks. But even the best stock picker will only win with some selections. At this point some shareholders may be questioning their investment in Tong Herr Resources Berhad (KLSE:TONGHER), since the last five years saw the share price fall 41%.
So let's have a look and see if the longer term performance of the company has been in line with the underlying business' progress.
View our latest analysis for Tong Herr Resources Berhad
There is no denying that markets are sometimes efficient, but prices do not always reflect underlying business performance. One way to examine how market sentiment has changed over time is to look at the interaction between a company's share price and its earnings per share (EPS).
During the five years over which the share price declined, Tong Herr Resources Berhad's earnings per share (EPS) dropped by 22% each year. The share price decline of 10% per year isn't as bad as the EPS decline. So investors might expect EPS to bounce back -- or they may have previously foreseen the EPS decline.
The company's earnings per share (over time) is depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).
Before buying or selling a stock, we always recommend a close examination of historic growth trends, available here.
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. We note that for Tong Herr Resources Berhad the TSR over the last 5 years was -21%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.
A Different Perspective
Investors in Tong Herr Resources Berhad had a tough year, with a total loss of 13% (including dividends), against a market gain of about 6.4%. However, keep in mind that even the best stocks will sometimes underperform the market over a twelve month period. Regrettably, last year's performance caps off a bad run, with the shareholders facing a total loss of 4% per year over five years. We realise that Baron Rothschild 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 business. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Tong Herr Resources Berhad better, we need to consider many other factors. Consider risks, for instance. Every company has them, and we've spotted 3 warning signs for Tong Herr Resources Berhad you should know about.