If you buy and hold a stock for many years, you'd hope to be making a profit. Furthermore, you'd generally like to see the share price rise faster than the market. Unfortunately for shareholders, while the McDonald's Corporation (NYSE:MCD) share price is up 63% in the last five years, that's less than the market return. On a brighter note, more newer shareholders are probably rather content with the 23% share price gain over twelve months.

Since it's been a strong week for McDonald's shareholders, let's have a look at trend of the longer term fundamentals.

Check out our latest analysis for McDonald's

To paraphrase Benjamin Graham: Over the short term the market is a voting machine, but over the long term it's a weighing machine. 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.

Over half a decade, McDonald's managed to grow its earnings per share at 8.5% a year. This EPS growth is reasonably close to the 10% average annual increase in the share price. This indicates that investor sentiment towards the company has not changed a great deal. Indeed, it would appear the share price is reacting to the EPS.

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

Dive deeper into McDonald's' key metrics by checking this interactive graph of McDonald's's earnings, revenue and cash flow.

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 incorporates the value of any spin-offs or discounted capital raisings, along with any dividends, based on the assumption that the dividends are reinvested. It's fair to say that the TSR gives a more complete picture for stocks that pay a dividend. In the case of McDonald's, it has a TSR of 83% for the last 5 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.

A Different Perspective

McDonald's provided a TSR of 26% over the last twelve months. But that return falls short of the market. On the bright side, that's still a gain, and it's actually better than the average return of 13% over half a decade This could indicate that the company is winning over new investors, as it pursues its strategy. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand McDonald's better, we need to consider many other factors. To that end, you should be aware of the 2 warning signs we've spotted with McDonald's .