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In order to justify the effort of selecting individual stocks, it's worth striving to beat the returns from a market index fund. But in any portfolio, there are likely to be some stocks that fall short of that benchmark. We regret to report that long term NetLink NBN Trust (SGX:CJLU) shareholders have had that experience, with the share price dropping 14% in three years, versus a market decline of about 9.4%.
So let's have a look and see if the longer term performance of the company has been in line with the underlying business' progress.
Check out our latest analysis for NetLink NBN Trust
To paraphrase Benjamin Graham: Over the short term the market is a voting machine, but over the long term it's a weighing machine. One flawed but reasonable way to assess how sentiment around a company has changed is to compare the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price.
During the unfortunate three years of share price decline, NetLink NBN Trust actually saw its earnings per share (EPS) improve by 2.9% per year. Given the share price reaction, one might suspect that EPS is not a good guide to the business performance during the period (perhaps due to a one-off loss or gain). Alternatively, growth expectations may have been unreasonable in the past.
With EPS gaining and a declining share price, one would suggest the market is cooling on its view of the company. Having said that, if the EPS gains continue we'd expect the share price to improve, longer term.
You can see how EPS has changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).
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. It might be well worthwhile taking a look at our free report on NetLink NBN Trust's earnings, revenue and cash flow.
What About Dividends?
As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). 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. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. In the case of NetLink NBN Trust, it has a TSR of 2.7% for the last 3 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!
A Different Perspective
NetLink NBN Trust shareholders gained a total return of 1.5% during the year. But that return falls short of the market. On the bright side, the longer term returns (running at about 4% a year, over half a decade) look better. Maybe the share price is just taking a breather while the business executes on its growth strategy. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand NetLink NBN Trust better, we need to consider many other factors. Even so, be aware that NetLink NBN Trust is showing 1 warning sign in our investment analysis , you should know about...