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 The SPAR Group Ltd (JSE:SPP) shareholders for doubting their decision to hold, with the stock down 37% over a half decade.
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.
While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just 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, SPAR Group’s earnings per share (EPS) dropped by 3.9% each year. This reduction in EPS is less than the 9% annual reduction in the share price. This implies that the market was previously too optimistic about the stock.
The graphic below depicts how EPS has changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).
We know that SPAR Group has improved its bottom line lately, but is it going to grow revenue? You could check out this free report showing analyst revenue forecasts.
We’d be remiss not to mention the difference between SPAR Group’s total shareholder return (TSR) and its share price return. 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. SPAR Group’s TSR of was a loss of 30% for the 5 years. That wasn’t as bad as its share price return, because it has paid dividends.
While the broader market gained around 22% in the last year, SPAR Group shareholders lost 10%. However, keep in mind that even the best stocks will sometimes underperform the market over a twelve month period. Unfortunately, last year’s performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 5% over the last half decade. 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 SPAR Group better, we need to consider many other factors. Take risks, for example – SPAR Group has 1 warning sign we think you should be aware of.
