In order to justify the effort of selecting individual stocks, it's worth striving to beat the returns from a market index fund. But every investor is virtually certain to have both over-performing and under-performing stocks. At this point some shareholders may be questioning their investment in Genting Singapore Limited (SGX:G13), since the last five years saw the share price fall 32%.

With the stock having lost 3.6% in the past week, it's worth taking a look at business performance and seeing if there's any red flags.

Check out our latest analysis for Genting Singapore

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 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).

Looking back five years, both Genting Singapore's share price and EPS declined; the latter at a rate of 21% per year. This fall in the EPS is worse than the 8% compound annual share price fall. So the market may previously have expected a drop, or else it expects the situation will improve. The high P/E ratio of 54.14 suggests that shareholders believe earnings will grow in the years ahead.

The company's earnings per share (over time) is depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).

This free interactive report on Genting Singapore's earnings, revenue and cash flow is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

What About Dividends?

When looking at investment returns, it is important to consider the difference between total shareholder return (TSR) and share price return. 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 Genting Singapore, it has a TSR of -24% for the last 5 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!

A Different Perspective

Genting Singapore provided a TSR of 1.9% over the last twelve months. Unfortunately this falls short of the market return. But at least that's still a gain! Over five years the TSR has been a reduction of 4% per year, over five years. It could well be that the business is stabilizing. 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 be aware of the 1 warning sign we've spotted with Genting Singapore .

If you are like me, then you will not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.

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