The worst result, after buying shares in a company (assuming no leverage), would be if you lose all the money you put in. But on a lighter note, a good company can see its share price rise well over 100%. For instance, the price of Johns Lyng Group Limited (ASX:JLG) stock is up an impressive 284% over the last five years. It's even up 4.0% in the last week. But this could be related to the buoyant market which is up about 1.7% in a week.

With that in mind, it's worth seeing if the company's underlying fundamentals have been the driver of long term performance, or if there are some discrepancies.

See our latest analysis for Johns Lyng Group

While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just 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.

During five years of share price growth, Johns Lyng Group achieved compound earnings per share (EPS) growth of 25% per year. This EPS growth is reasonably close to the 31% average annual increase in the share price. That suggests that the market sentiment around the company hasn't changed much over that time. In fact, the share price seems to largely reflect the EPS growth.

The image below shows how EPS has tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).

We know that Johns Lyng Group 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?

It is important to consider the total shareholder return, as well as the share price return, for any given stock. Whereas the share price return only reflects the change in the share price, the TSR includes the value of dividends (assuming they were reinvested) and the benefit of any discounted capital raising or spin-off. It's fair to say that the TSR gives a more complete picture for stocks that pay a dividend. We note that for Johns Lyng Group the TSR over the last 5 years was 314%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.

A Different Perspective

Johns Lyng Group shareholders are up 12% for the year (even including dividends). Unfortunately this falls short of the market return. On the bright side, the longer term returns (running at about 33% a year, over half a decade) look better. It may well be that this is a business worth popping on the watching, given the continuing positive reception, over time, from the market. If you would like to research Johns Lyng Group in more detail then you might want to take a look at whether insiders have been buying or selling shares in the company.