Active investing isn't easy, but for those that do it, the aim is to find the best companies to buy, and to profit handsomely. When you buy and hold the right company, the returns can make a huge difference to both you and your family. In the case of Findi Limited (ASX:FND), the share price is up an incredible 872% in the last year alone. It's also good to see the share price up 72% over the last quarter. This could be related to the recent financial results, released recently - you can catch up on the most recent data by reading our company report. And shareholders have also done well over the long term, with an increase of 488% in the last three years. We love happy stories like this one. The company should be really proud of that performance!

Let's take a look at the underlying fundamentals over the longer term, and see if they've been consistent with shareholders returns.

See our latest analysis for Findi

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 last year Findi grew its earnings per share (EPS) by 54%. The share price gain of 872% certainly outpaced the EPS growth. This indicates that the market is now more optimistic about the stock. The fairly generous P/E ratio of 54.04 also points to this optimism.

You can see below how EPS has changed over time (discover the exact values by clicking on the image).

We consider it positive that insiders have made significant purchases in the last year. Even so, future earnings will be far more important to whether current shareholders make money. Dive deeper into the earnings by checking this interactive graph of Findi's earnings, revenue and cash flow.

A Different Perspective

It's nice to see that Findi shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 872% over the last year. That's better than the annualised return of 49% over half a decade, implying that the company is doing better recently. Someone with an optimistic perspective could view the recent improvement in TSR as indicating that the business itself is getting better with time. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Findi better, we need to consider many other factors. Like risks, for instance. Every company has them, and we've spotted 3 warning signs for Findi (of which 1 can't be ignored!) you should know about.