Shui On Land Limited (HKG:272) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 18% in the last quarter. But over the last half decade, the stock has not performed well. You would have done a lot better buying an index fund, since the stock has dropped 60% in that half decade.

After losing 6.9% this past week, it's worth investigating the company's fundamentals to see what we can infer from past performance.

View our latest analysis for Shui On Land

To quote Buffett, 'Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace...' 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 Shui On Land's share price and EPS declined; the latter at a rate of 33% per year. This fall in the EPS is worse than the 17% compound annual share price fall. The relatively muted share price reaction might be because the market expects the business to turn around.

The graphic below depicts how EPS has changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).

This free interactive report on Shui On Land's earnings, revenue and cash flow is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

What About The Total Shareholder Return (TSR)?

Investors should note that there's a difference between Shui On Land's total shareholder return (TSR) and its share price change, which we've covered above. Arguably the TSR is a more complete return calculation because it accounts for the value of dividends (as if they were reinvested), along with the hypothetical value of any discounted capital that have been offered to shareholders. Its history of dividend payouts mean that Shui On Land's TSR, which was a 41% drop over the last 5 years, was not as bad as the share price return.

A Different Perspective

Shui On Land provided a TSR of 3.5% over the last twelve months. But that was short of the market average. On the bright side, that's still a gain, and it is certainly better than the yearly loss of about 7% endured over half a decade. So this might be a sign the business has turned its fortunes around. I find it very interesting to look at share price over the long term as a proxy for business performance. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. For instance, we've identified 2 warning signs for Shui On Land that you should be aware of.

If you would prefer to check out another company -- one with potentially superior financials -- then do not miss this free list of companies that have proven they can grow earnings.

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on Hong Kong exchanges.

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