When you buy shares in a company, it's worth keeping in mind the possibility that it could fail, and you could lose your money. But on the bright side, you can make far more than 100% on a really good stock. Long term Bicycle Therapeutics plc (NASDAQ:BCYC) shareholders would be well aware of this, since the stock is up 216% in five years. It's down 1.6% in the last seven days.

So let's assess the underlying fundamentals over the last 5 years and see if they've moved in lock-step with shareholder returns.

Check out our latest analysis for Bicycle Therapeutics

Because Bicycle Therapeutics made a loss in the last twelve months, we think the market is probably more focussed on revenue and revenue growth, at least for now. Shareholders of unprofitable companies usually desire strong revenue growth. That's because it's hard to be confident a company will be sustainable if revenue growth is negligible, and it never makes a profit.

In the last 5 years Bicycle Therapeutics saw its revenue grow at 29% per year. That's well above most pre-profit companies. Meanwhile, its share price performance certainly reflects the strong growth, given the share price grew at 26% per year, compound, during the period. So it seems likely that buyers have paid attention to the strong revenue growth. Bicycle Therapeutics seems like a high growth stock - so growth investors might want to add it to their watchlist.

The company's revenue and earnings (over time) are depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).

Bicycle Therapeutics is well known by investors, and plenty of clever analysts have tried to predict the future profit levels. If you are thinking of buying or selling Bicycle Therapeutics stock, you should check out this free report showing analyst consensus estimates for future profits.

A Different Perspective

While the broader market gained around 23% in the last year, Bicycle Therapeutics shareholders lost 2.1%. Even the share prices of good stocks drop sometimes, but we want to see improvements in the fundamental metrics of a business, before getting too interested. Longer term investors wouldn't be so upset, since they would have made 26%, each year, over five years. If the fundamental data continues to indicate long term sustainable growth, the current sell-off could be an opportunity worth considering. 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. Even so, be aware that Bicycle Therapeutics is showing 2 warning signs in our investment analysis , and 1 of those is potentially serious...