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. Unfortunately for shareholders, while the V2X, Inc. (NYSE:VVX) share price is up 64% in the last five years, that's less than the market return. Looking at the last year alone, the stock is up 19%.

Since it's been a strong week for V2X shareholders, let's have a look at trend of the longer term fundamentals.

V2X isn't currently profitable, so most analysts would look to revenue growth to get an idea of how fast the underlying business is growing. Shareholders of unprofitable companies usually desire strong revenue growth. Some companies are willing to postpone profitability to grow revenue faster, but in that case one would hope for good top-line growth to make up for the lack of earnings.

For the last half decade, V2X can boast revenue growth at a rate of 26% per year. That's well above most pre-profit companies. While long-term shareholders have made money, the 10% per year gain over five years fall short of the market return. You could argue the market is still pretty skeptical, given the growing revenues. Arguably this falls in a potential sweet spot - modest share price gains but good top line growth over the long term justifies investigation, in our book.

The image below shows how earnings and revenue have tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).

Take a more thorough look at V2X's financial health with this free report on its balance sheet.

A Different Perspective

V2X shareholders gained a total return of 19% during the year. But that was short of the market average. The silver lining is that the gain was actually better than the average annual return of 10% per year over five year. It is possible that returns will improve along with the business fundamentals. 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. Even so, be aware that V2X is showing 1 warning sign in our investment analysis , you should know about...

For those who like to find winning investments this free list of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket.

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.