For many, the main point of investing is to generate higher returns than the overall market. But every investor is virtually certain to have both over-performing and under-performing stocks. At this point some shareholders may be questioning their investment in Hotel Grand Central Limited (SGX:H18), since the last five years saw the share price fall 43%.

It's worthwhile assessing if the company's economics have been moving in lockstep with these underwhelming shareholder returns, or if there is some disparity between the two. So let's do just that.

See our latest analysis for Hotel Grand Central

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 imperfect but simple way to consider how the market perception of a company has shifted is to compare the change in the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price movement.

During the five years over which the share price declined, Hotel Grand Central's earnings per share (EPS) dropped by 15% each year. The share price decline of 11% per year isn't as bad as the EPS decline. The relatively muted share price reaction might be because the market expects the business to turn around. The high P/E ratio of 48.88 suggests that shareholders believe earnings will grow in the years ahead.

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

It's probably worth noting that the CEO is paid less than the median at similar sized companies. It's always worth keeping an eye on CEO pay, but a more important question is whether the company will grow earnings throughout the years. This free interactive report on Hotel Grand Central's earnings, revenue and cash flow is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

What About Dividends?

As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). 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. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. We note that for Hotel Grand Central the TSR over the last 5 years was -36%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.