If you love investing in stocks you're bound to buy some losers. But the last three years have been particularly tough on longer term Atlassian Corporation (NASDAQ:TEAM) shareholders. Regrettably, they have had to cope with a 55% drop in the share price over that period. More recently, the share price has dropped a further 9.8% in a month. This could be related to the recent financial results - you can catch up on the most recent data by reading our company report.

While the last three years has been tough for Atlassian shareholders, this past week has shown signs of promise. So let's look at the longer term fundamentals and see if they've been the driver of the negative returns.

Check out our latest analysis for Atlassian

Atlassian wasn't profitable in the last twelve months, it is unlikely we'll see a strong correlation between its share price and its earnings per share (EPS). Arguably revenue is our next best option. When a company doesn't make profits, we'd generally hope to see good revenue growth. That's because it's hard to be confident a company will be sustainable if revenue growth is negligible, and it never makes a profit.

In the last three years, Atlassian saw its revenue grow by 24% per year, compound. That's well above most other pre-profit companies. The share price has moved in quite the opposite direction, down 16% over that time, a bad result. It seems likely that the market is worried about the continual losses. But a share price drop of that magnitude could well signal that the market is overly negative on the stock.

You can see below how earnings and revenue have changed over time (discover the exact values by clicking on the image).

We're pleased to report that the CEO is remunerated more modestly than most CEOs at similarly capitalized companies. But while CEO remuneration is always worth checking, the really important question is whether the company can grow earnings going forward. This free report showing analyst forecasts should help you form a view on Atlassian

A Different Perspective

Atlassian shareholders are down 16% for the year, but the market itself is up 28%. Even the share prices of good stocks drop sometimes, but we want to see improvements in the fundamental metrics of a business, before getting too interested. On the bright side, long term shareholders have made money, with a gain of 4% per year over half a decade. It could be that the recent sell-off is an opportunity, so it may be worth checking the fundamental data for signs of a long term growth trend. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Atlassian better, we need to consider many other factors. Even so, be aware that Atlassian is showing 2 warning signs in our investment analysis , you should know about...