If you are building a properly diversified stock portfolio, the chances are some of your picks will perform badly. Long term Anpario plc (LON:ANP) shareholders know that all too well, since the share price is down considerably over three years. So they might be feeling emotional about the 55% share price collapse, in that time. On top of that, the share price is down 5.6% in the last week.

Now let's have a look at the company's fundamentals, and see if the long term shareholder return has matched the performance of the underlying business.

Check out our latest analysis for Anpario

To paraphrase Benjamin Graham: Over the short term the market is a voting machine, but over the long term it's a weighing machine. By comparing earnings per share (EPS) and share price changes over time, we can get a feel for how investor attitudes to a company have morphed over time.

Anpario saw its EPS decline at a compound rate of 15% per year, over the last three years. The share price decline of 23% is actually steeper than the EPS slippage. So it's likely that the EPS decline has disappointed the market, leaving investors hesitant to buy.

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

Before buying or selling a stock, we always recommend a close examination of historic growth trends, available here.

What About Dividends?

It is important to consider the total shareholder return, as well as the share price return, for any given stock. The TSR incorporates the value of any spin-offs or discounted capital raisings, along with any dividends, based on the assumption that the dividends are reinvested. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. In the case of Anpario, it has a TSR of -51% for the last 3 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!

A Different Perspective

It's nice to see that Anpario shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 29% over the last year. Of course, that includes the dividend. Notably the five-year annualised TSR loss of 5% per year compares very unfavourably with the recent share price performance. This makes us a little wary, but the business might have turned around its fortunes. 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. Case in point: We've spotted 3 warning signs for Anpario you should be aware of, and 1 of them can't be ignored.