It hasn't been the best quarter for Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE:ALLY) shareholders, since the share price has fallen 14% in that time. But that doesn't change the fact that the returns over the last year have been respectable. After all, the stock has performed better than the market's return of (38%) over the last year, and is up 46%.

Now it's worth having a look at the company's fundamentals too, because that will help us determine if the long term shareholder return has matched the performance of the underlying business.

See our latest analysis for Ally Financial

While the efficient markets hypothesis continues to be taught by some, it has been proven that markets are over-reactive dynamic systems, and investors are not always rational. 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).

Over the last twelve months, Ally Financial actually shrank its EPS by 36%.

Given the share price gain, we doubt the market is measuring progress with EPS. Therefore, it seems likely that investors are putting more weight on metrics other than EPS, at the moment.

Unfortunately Ally Financial's fell 9.6% over twelve months. So the fundamental metrics don't provide an obvious explanation for the share price gain.

The image below shows how earnings and revenue have tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).

Ally Financial is well known by investors, and plenty of clever analysts have tried to predict the future profit levels. So we recommend checking out this free report showing consensus 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. We note that for Ally Financial the TSR over the last 1 year was 51%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!

A Different Perspective

We're pleased to report that Ally Financial shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 51% over one year. That's including the dividend. Since the one-year TSR is better than the five-year TSR (the latter coming in at 7% per year), it would seem that the stock's performance has improved in recent times. Someone with an optimistic perspective could view the recent improvement in TSR as indicating that the business itself is getting better with time. While it is well worth considering the different impacts that market conditions can have on the share price, there are other factors that are even more important. For example, we've discovered 1 warning sign for Ally Financial that you should be aware of before investing here.