The most you can lose on any stock (assuming you don't use leverage) is 100% of your money. But if you buy shares in a really great company, you can more than double your money. For instance the Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:APLS) share price is 145% higher than it was three years ago. How nice for those who held the stock! Also pleasing for shareholders was the 42% gain in the last three months.

Although Apellis Pharmaceuticals has shed US$550m from its market cap this week, let's take a look at its longer term fundamental trends and see if they've driven returns.

See our latest analysis for Apellis Pharmaceuticals

Apellis Pharmaceuticals isn't currently profitable, so most analysts would look to revenue growth to get an idea of how fast the underlying business is growing. When a company doesn't make profits, we'd generally expect to see good revenue growth. As you can imagine, fast revenue growth, when maintained, often leads to fast profit growth.

Over the last three years Apellis Pharmaceuticals has grown its revenue at 63% annually. That's much better than most loss-making companies. Meanwhile, the share price performance has been pretty solid at 35% compound over three years. But it does seem like the market is paying attention to strong revenue growth. Nonetheless, we'd say Apellis Pharmaceuticals is still worth investigating - successful businesses can often keep growing for long periods.

The graphic below depicts how earnings and revenue have changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).

Apellis Pharmaceuticals is well known by investors, and plenty of clever analysts have tried to predict the future profit levels. Given we have quite a good number of analyst forecasts, it might be well worth checking out this free chart depicting consensus estimates.

A Different Perspective

Pleasingly, Apellis Pharmaceuticals' total shareholder return last year was 83%. That's better than the annualized TSR of 35% over the last three years. The improving returns to shareholders suggests the stock is becoming more popular with time. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Apellis Pharmaceuticals better, we need to consider many other factors. For example, we've discovered 2 warning signs for Apellis Pharmaceuticals that you should be aware of before investing here.

But note: Apellis Pharmaceuticals may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies with past earnings growth (and further growth forecast).

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on US 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.