Yahoo Finance Pitney Bowes (NYSE:PBI) investors are sitting on a loss of 45% if they invested three years ago
As an investor its worth striving to ensure your overall portfolio beats the market average. But if you try your hand at stock picking, your risk returning less than the market. Unfortunately, that's been the case for longer term Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE:PBI) shareholders, since the share price is down 52% in the last three years, falling well short of the market return of around 20%.
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.
View our latest analysis for Pitney Bowes
Pitney Bowes isn't currently profitable, so most analysts would look to revenue growth to get an idea of how fast the underlying business is growing. Shareholders of unprofitable companies usually desire strong revenue growth. That's because it's hard to be confident a company will be sustainable if revenue growth is negligible, and it never makes a profit.
In the last three years Pitney Bowes saw its revenue shrink by 3.9% per year. That's not what investors generally want to see. With revenue in decline, and profit but a dream, we can understand why the share price has been declining at 15% per year. Having said that, if growth is coming in the future, now may be the low ebb for the company. We don't generally like to own companies that lose money and can't grow revenues. But any company is worth looking at when it makes a maiden profit.
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 Pitney Bowes' balance sheet strength is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.
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. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. As it happens, Pitney Bowes' TSR for the last 3 years was -45%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!
A Different Perspective
Pitney Bowes shareholders are up 12% for the year (even including dividends). Unfortunately this falls short of the market return. But at least that's still a gain! Over five years the TSR has been a reduction of 5% per year, over five years. It could well be that the business is stabilizing. While it is well worth considering the different impacts that market conditions can have on the share price, there are other factors that are even more important. For example, we've discovered 2 warning signs for Pitney Bowes that you should be aware of before investing here.
Of course Pitney Bowes 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 American exchanges.
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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. 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.
