Yahoo Finance If You Had Bought IQE (LON:IQE) Shares Five Years Ago You'd Have Earned153% Returns
When you buy shares in a company, it's worth keeping in mind the possibility that it could fail, and you could lose your money. But on the bright side, if you buy shares in a high quality company at the right price, you can gain well over 100%. Long term IQE plc (LON:IQE) shareholders would be well aware of this, since the stock is up 153% in five years. On top of that, the share price is up 43% in about a quarter.
View our latest analysis for IQE
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 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, IQE actually saw its EPS drop 44% per year.
Essentially, it doesn't seem likely that investors are focused on EPS. Since the change in EPS doesn't seem to correlate with the change in share price, it's worth taking a look at other metrics.
On the other hand, IQE's revenue is growing nicely, at a compound rate of 7.1% over the last five years. It's quite possible that management are prioritizing revenue growth over EPS growth at the moment.
The company's revenue and earnings (over time) are depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).
This free interactive report on IQE's balance sheet strength is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.
A Different Perspective
It's good to see that IQE has rewarded shareholders with a total shareholder return of 31% in the last twelve months. That gain is better than the annual TSR over five years, which is 20%. Therefore it seems like sentiment around the company has been positive lately. Someone with an optimistic perspective could view the recent improvement in TSR as indicating that the business itself is getting better with time. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand IQE better, we need to consider many other factors. Even so, be aware that IQE is showing 1 warning sign in our investment analysis , you should know about...
Of course IQE may not be the best stock to buy. So you may wish to see this free collection of growth stocks.
Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on GB exchanges.
This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
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