When you buy shares in a company, it's worth keeping in mind the possibility that it could fail, and you could lose your money. But on a lighter note, a good company can see its share price rise well over 100%. For example, the LeMaitre Vascular, Inc. (NASDAQ:LMAT) share price has soared 184% in the last half decade. Most would be very happy with that. Also pleasing for shareholders was the 14% gain in the last three months. But this could be related to the strong market, which is up 6.2% in the last three months.

So let's assess the underlying fundamentals over the last 5 years and see if they've moved in lock-step with shareholder returns.

See our latest analysis for LeMaitre Vascular

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, LeMaitre Vascular achieved compound earnings per share (EPS) growth of 12% per year. This EPS growth is slower than the share price growth of 23% per year, over the same period. This suggests that market participants hold the company in higher regard, these days. And that's hardly shocking given the track record of growth. This optimism is visible in its fairly high P/E ratio of 53.84.

The image below shows how EPS has tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).

We're pleased to report that the CEO is remunerated more modestly than most CEOs at similarly capitalized companies. It's always worth keeping an eye on CEO pay, but a more important question is whether the company will grow earnings throughout the years. Before buying or selling a stock, we always recommend a close examination of historic growth trends, available here..

What About Dividends?

When looking at investment returns, it is important to consider the difference between total shareholder return (TSR) and share price return. The TSR incorporates the value of any spin-offs or discounted capital raisings, along with any dividends, based on the assumption that the dividends are reinvested. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. We note that for LeMaitre Vascular the TSR over the last 5 years was 199%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!