John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (NYSE:WLY) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 13% in the last month. But if you look at the last five years the returns have not been good. You would have done a lot better buying an index fund, since the stock has dropped 30% in that half decade.

While the stock has risen 3.9% in the past week but long term shareholders are still in the red, let's see what the fundamentals can tell us.

Check out our latest analysis for John Wiley & Sons

While the efficient markets hypothesis continues to be taught by some, it has been proven that markets are over-reactive dynamic systems, and investors are not always rational. One imperfect but simple way to consider how the market perception of a company has shifted is to compare the change in the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price movement.

During the five years over which the share price declined, John Wiley & Sons' earnings per share (EPS) dropped by 9.1% each year. This fall in the EPS is worse than the 7% compound annual share price fall. So investors might expect EPS to bounce back -- or they may have previously foreseen the EPS decline.

The graphic below depicts how EPS has changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).

Before buying or selling a stock, we always recommend a close examination of historic growth trends, available here.

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 incorporates the value of any spin-offs or discounted capital raisings, along with any dividends, based on the assumption that the dividends are reinvested. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. In the case of John Wiley & Sons, it has a TSR of -19% for the last 5 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!

A Different Perspective

John Wiley & Sons shareholders are down 8.2% over twelve months (even including dividends), which isn't far from the market return of -7.9%. Unfortunately, last year's performance is a deterioration of an already poor long term track record, given the loss of 3% per year over the last five years. It will probably take a substantial improvement in the fundamental performance for the company to reverse this trend. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand John Wiley & Sons better, we need to consider many other factors. For example, we've discovered 3 warning signs for John Wiley & Sons that you should be aware of before investing here.

Of course John Wiley & Sons 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 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.