American States Water Company (NYSE:AWR) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 14% in the last quarter. But over the last half decade, the stock has not performed well. After all, the share price is down 10% in that time, significantly under-performing the market.

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.

See our latest analysis for American States Water

To quote Buffett, 'Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace...' 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).

While the share price declined over five years, American States Water actually managed to increase EPS by an average of 6.6% per year. So it doesn't seem like EPS is a great guide to understanding how the market is valuing the stock. Alternatively, growth expectations may have been unreasonable in the past.

Generally speaking we'd hope to see stronger share price increases on the back of sustained EPS growth, but other metrics may hold a clue to why the share price performance is relatively modest.

In contrast to the share price, revenue has actually increased by 4.7% a year in the five year period. A more detailed examination of the revenue and earnings may or may not explain why the share price languishes; there could be an opportunity.

You can see how earnings and revenue have 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. Having said that, most people consider earnings and revenue growth trends to be a more meaningful guide to the business. So it makes a lot of sense to check out what analysts think American States Water will earn in the future (free profit forecasts).

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 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. Arguably, the TSR gives a more comprehensive picture of the return generated by a stock. As it happens, American States Water's TSR for the last 5 years was -2.1%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.