If you buy and hold a stock for many years, you'd hope to be making a profit. Furthermore, you'd generally like to see the share price rise faster than the market. But IQVIA Holdings Inc. (NYSE:IQV) has fallen short of that second goal, with a share price rise of 75% over five years, which is below the market return. However, more recent buyers should be happy with the increase of 22% over the last year.

After a strong gain in the past week, it's worth seeing if longer term returns have been driven by improving fundamentals.

To quote Buffett, 'Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace...' One way to examine how market sentiment has changed over time is to look at the interaction between a company's share price and its earnings per share (EPS).

During five years of share price growth, IQVIA Holdings achieved compound earnings per share (EPS) growth of 43% per year. This EPS growth is higher than the 12% average annual increase in the share price. So it seems the market isn't so enthusiastic about the stock these days.

The image below shows how EPS has tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).

It is of course excellent to see how IQVIA Holdings has grown profits over the years, but the future is more important for shareholders. If you are thinking of buying or selling IQVIA Holdings stock, you should check out this FREE detailed report on its balance sheet.

A Different Perspective

IQVIA Holdings provided a TSR of 22% over the last twelve months. Unfortunately this falls short of the market return. The silver lining is that the gain was actually better than the average annual return of 12% per year over five year. This suggests the company might be improving over time. 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. To that end, you should learn about the 2 warning signs we've spotted with IQVIA Holdings (including 1 which can't be ignored) .

If you like to buy stocks alongside management, then you might just love this free list of companies. (Hint: insiders have been buying them).

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.