Grand City Properties S.A. (ETR:GYC) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 29% in the last quarter. But that doesn't change the fact that the returns over the last five years have been less than pleasing. In fact, the share price is down 55%, which falls well short of the return you could get by buying an index fund.

The recent uptick of 11% could be a positive sign of things to come, so let's take a look at historical fundamentals.

View our latest analysis for Grand City Properties

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 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.

In the last half decade Grand City Properties saw its share price fall as its EPS declined below zero. This was, in part, due to extraordinary items impacting earnings. At present it's hard to make valid comparisons between EPS and the share price. But we would generally expect a lower price, given the situation.

The company's earnings per share (over time) is depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).

Before buying or selling a stock, we always recommend a close examination of historic growth trends, available here.

What About Dividends?

When looking at investment returns, it is important to consider the difference between total shareholder return (TSR) and share price return. 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. In the case of Grand City Properties, it has a TSR of -46% for the last 5 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!

A Different Perspective

Grand City Properties shareholders are down 7.9% for the year (even including dividends), but the market itself is up 5.3%. 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. However, the loss over the last year isn't as bad as the 8% per annum loss investors have suffered over the last half decade. We would want clear information suggesting the company will grow, before taking the view that the share price will stabilize. 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. For example, we've discovered 3 warning signs for Grand City Properties (1 makes us a bit uncomfortable!) that you should be aware of before investing here.