If you love investing in stocks you're bound to buy some losers. But long term dotdigital Group Plc (LON:DOTD) shareholders have had a particularly rough ride in the last three year. Unfortunately, they have held through a 63% decline in the share price in that time.

It's worthwhile assessing if the company's economics have been moving in lockstep with these underwhelming shareholder returns, or if there is some disparity between the two. So let's do just that.

View our latest analysis for dotdigital Group

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. By comparing earnings per share (EPS) and share price changes over time, we can get a feel for how investor attitudes to a company have morphed over time.

During the unfortunate three years of share price decline, dotdigital Group actually saw its earnings per share (EPS) improve by 0.5% per year. Given the share price reaction, one might suspect that EPS is not a good guide to the business performance during the period (perhaps due to a one-off loss or gain). Or else the company was over-hyped in the past, and so its growth has disappointed.

After considering the numbers, we'd posit that the the market had higher expectations of EPS growth, three years back. However, taking a look at other business metrics might shed a bit more light on the share price action.

With a rather small yield of just 1.1% we doubt that the stock's share price is based on its dividend. Revenue is actually up 10% over the three years, so the share price drop doesn't seem to hinge on revenue, either. It's probably worth investigating dotdigital Group further; while we may be missing something on this analysis, there might also be an opportunity.

The company's revenue and earnings (over time) are depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).

You can see how its balance sheet has strengthened (or weakened) over time in this free interactive graphic.

A Different Perspective

It's nice to see that dotdigital Group shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 16% over the last year. Of course, that includes the dividend. Since the one-year TSR is better than the five-year TSR (the latter coming in at 0.3% per year), it would seem that the stock's performance has improved in recent times. In the best case scenario, this may hint at some real business momentum, implying that now could be a great time to delve deeper. While it is well worth considering the different impacts that market conditions can have on the share price, there are other factors that are even more important. Even so, be aware that dotdigital Group is showing 1 warning sign in our investment analysis , you should know about...