The main point of investing for the long term is to make money. Better yet, you’d like to see the share price move up more than the market average. Unfortunately for shareholders, while the The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) share price is up 67% in the last five years, that’s less than the market return. Over the last twelve months the stock price has risen a very respectable 8.9%.
So let’s assess the underlying fundamentals over the last 5 years and see if they’ve moved in lock-step with shareholder returns.
View our latest analysis for Home Depot
While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just underlying business performance. By comparing earnings per share (EPS) and share price changes over time, we can get a feel for how investor attitudes to a company have morphed over time.
During five years of share price growth, Home Depot achieved compound earnings per share (EPS) growth of 7.8% per year. This EPS growth is lower than the 11% average annual increase in the share price. This suggests that market participants hold the company in higher regard, these days. That’s not necessarily surprising considering the five-year track record of earnings growth.
The image below shows how EPS has tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).
Dive deeper into Home Depot’s key metrics by checking this interactive graph of Home Depot’s earnings, revenue and cash flow.
As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). 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, Home Depot’s TSR for the last 5 years was 88%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. And there’s no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!
Home Depot provided a TSR of 12% over the last twelve months. But that return falls short of the market. On the bright side, the longer term returns (running at about 13% a year, over half a decade) look better. It may well be that this is a business worth popping on the watching, given the continuing positive reception, over time, from the market. 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. Consider risks, for instance. Every company has them, and we’ve spotted 1 warning sign for Home Depot you should know about.
