The main point of investing for the long term is to make money. But more than that, you probably want to see it rise more than the market average. But Clairvest Group Inc. (TSE:CVG) has fallen short of that second goal, with a share price rise of 39% over five years, which is below the market return. The last year has been disappointing, with the stock price down 9.3% in that time.

With that in mind, it's worth seeing if the company's underlying fundamentals have been the driver of long term performance, or if there are some discrepancies.

See our latest analysis for Clairvest Group

There is no denying that markets are sometimes efficient, but prices do not always reflect underlying business performance. 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 five years of share price growth, Clairvest Group actually saw its EPS drop 56% per year. This was, in part, due to extraordinary items impacting earning in the last twelve months.

Essentially, it doesn't seem likely that investors are focused on EPS. Because earnings per share don't seem to match up with the share price, we'll take a look at other metrics instead.

We doubt the modest 1.2% dividend yield is attracting many buyers to the stock. It is not great to see that revenue has dropped by 4.7% per year over five years. So it seems one might have to take closer look at earnings and revenue trends to see how they might influence the share price.

The graphic below depicts how earnings and revenue have changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).

It's probably worth noting we've seen significant insider buying in the last quarter, which we consider a positive. That said, we think earnings and revenue growth trends are even more important factors to consider. This free interactive report on Clairvest Group's earnings, revenue and cash flow is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

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 is a return calculation that accounts for the value of cash dividends (assuming that any dividend received was reinvested) and the calculated value of any discounted capital raisings and spin-offs. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. As it happens, Clairvest Group's TSR for the last 5 years was 61%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!