Yahoo Finance If You Had Bought Seeing Machines (LON:SEE) Stock Five Years Ago, You'd Be Sitting On A 23% Loss, Today
For many, the main point of investing is to generate higher returns than the overall market. But in any portfolio, there will be mixed results between individual stocks. At this point some shareholders may be questioning their investment in Seeing Machines Limited (LON:SEE), since the last five years saw the share price fall 23%.
See our latest analysis for Seeing Machines
Seeing Machines isn't currently profitable, so most analysts would look to revenue growth to get an idea of how fast the underlying business is growing. Generally speaking, companies without profits are expected to grow revenue every year, and at a good clip. As you can imagine, fast revenue growth, when maintained, often leads to fast profit growth.
Over five years, Seeing Machines grew its revenue at 12% per year. That's a fairly respectable growth rate. Shareholders have seen the share price fall at 5.0% per year, for five years: a poor performance. Clearly, the expectations from back then have not been satisfied. There is always a big risk of losing money yourself when you buy shares in a company that loses money.
You can see how earnings and revenue have changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).
This free interactive report on Seeing Machines's balance sheet strength is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.
A Different Perspective
While the broader market gained around 8.2% in the last year, Seeing Machines shareholders lost 20%. 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. Regrettably, last year's performance caps off a bad run, with the shareholders facing a total loss of 5.0% per year over five years. We realise that Buffett has said investors should 'buy when there is blood on the streets', but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality businesses. Before spending more time on Seeing Machines it might be wise to click here to see if insiders have been buying or selling shares.
Of course Seeing Machines 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.
We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.
If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. 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. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
