Taking the occasional loss comes part and parcel with investing on the stock market. And there's no doubt that Yalla Group Limited (NYSE:YALA) stock has had a really bad year. In that relatively short period, the share price has plunged 62%. Because Yalla Group hasn't been listed for many years, the market is still learning about how the business performs. Even worse, it's down 19% in about a month, which isn't fun at all. This could be related to the recent financial results - you can catch up on the most recent data by reading our company report.

Given the past week has been tough on shareholders, let's investigate the fundamentals and see what we can learn.

See our latest analysis for Yalla Group

While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just underlying business performance. One flawed but reasonable way to assess how sentiment around a company has changed is to compare the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price.

Even though the Yalla Group share price is down over the year, its EPS actually improved. It's quite possible that growth expectations may have been unreasonable in the past.

It's fair to say that the share price does not seem to be reflecting the EPS growth. So it's easy to justify a look at some other metrics.

Yalla Group managed to grow revenue over the last year, which is usually a real positive. Since the fundamental metrics don't readily explain the share price drop, there might be an opportunity if the market has overreacted.

You can see how earnings and revenue have changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).

We know that Yalla Group has improved its bottom line lately, but what does the future have in store? So we recommend checking out this free report showing consensus forecasts

A Different Perspective

Yalla Group shareholders are down 62% for the year, even worse than the market loss of 13%. There's no doubt that's a disappointment, but the stock may well have fared better in a stronger market. It's great to see a nice little 6.5% rebound in the last three months. This could just be a bounce because the selling was too aggressive, but fingers crossed it's the start of a new trend. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Yalla Group better, we need to consider many other factors. Even so, be aware that Yalla Group is showing 1 warning sign in our investment analysis , you should know about...

We will like Yalla Group better if we see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of growing companies with considerable, recent, insider buying.

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.