If you buy and hold a stock for many years, you'd hope to be making a profit. Furthermore, you'd generally like to see the share price rise faster than the market. But Nedap N.V. (AMS:NEDAP) has fallen short of that second goal, with a share price rise of 32% over five years, which is below the market return. Over the last twelve months the stock price has risen a very respectable 7.2%.

So let's investigate and see if the longer term performance of the company has been in line with the underlying business' progress.

View our latest analysis for Nedap

There is no denying that markets are sometimes efficient, but prices do not always reflect underlying business performance. 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.

Over half a decade, Nedap managed to grow its earnings per share at 4.3% a year. This EPS growth is lower than the 6% average annual increase in the share price. This suggests that market participants hold the company in higher regard, these days. That's not necessarily surprising considering the five-year track record of earnings growth.

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

We know that Nedap has improved its bottom line lately, but is it going to grow revenue? You could check out this free report showing analyst revenue forecasts.

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. In the case of Nedap, it has a TSR of 66% for the last 5 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.

A Different Perspective

Nedap provided a TSR of 13% over the last twelve months. But that was short of the market average. On the bright side, that's still a gain, and it's actually better than the average return of 11% over half a decade This could indicate that the company is winning over new investors, as it pursues its strategy. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Nedap better, we need to consider many other factors. To that end, you should be aware of the 1 warning sign we've spotted with Nedap .