Ideally, your overall portfolio should beat the market average. But the main game is to find enough winners to more than offset the losers So we wouldn't blame long term Aquestive Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AQST) shareholders for doubting their decision to hold, with the stock down 36% over a half decade. It's down 41% in about a quarter.

Since shareholders are down over the longer term, lets look at the underlying fundamentals over the that time and see if they've been consistent with returns.

Check out our latest analysis for Aquestive Therapeutics

Given that Aquestive Therapeutics didn't make a profit in the last twelve months, we'll focus on revenue growth to form a quick view of its business development. 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.

In the last five years Aquestive Therapeutics saw its revenue shrink by 2.4% per year. That's not what investors generally want to see. The share price decline at a rate of 6% per year is disappointing. But it doesn't surprise given the falling revenue. Without profits, its hard to see how shareholders win if the revenue keeps falling.

You can see how earnings and revenue have changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).

Balance sheet strength is crucial. It might be well worthwhile taking a look at our free report on how its financial position has changed over time.

A Different Perspective

It's good to see that Aquestive Therapeutics has rewarded shareholders with a total shareholder return of 31% in the last twelve months. There's no doubt those recent returns are much better than the TSR loss of 6% per year over five years. We generally put more weight on the long term performance over the short term, but the recent improvement could hint at a (positive) inflection point within the business. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Aquestive Therapeutics better, we need to consider many other factors. Like risks, for instance. Every company has them, and we've spotted 4 warning signs for Aquestive Therapeutics (of which 2 shouldn't be ignored!) you should know about.

We will like Aquestive Therapeutics better if we see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of undervalued stocks (mostly small caps) with considerable, recent, insider buying.