While not a mind-blowing move, it is good to see that the Essentra plc (LON:ESNT) share price has gained 12% in the last three months. But that doesn't change the fact that the returns over the last five years have been less than pleasing. After all, the share price is down 54% in that time, significantly under-performing the market.

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 Essentra

To quote Buffett, 'Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace...' 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.

Essentra became profitable within the last five years. That would generally be considered a positive, so we are surprised to see the share price is down. Other metrics might give us a better handle on how its value is changing over time.

We don't think that the 1.9% is big factor in the share price, since it's quite small, as dividends go. It could be that the revenue decline of 30% per year is viewed as evidence that Essentra is shrinking. That could explain the weak share price.

The company's revenue and earnings (over time) are depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).

We know that Essentra has improved its bottom line lately, but what does the future have in store? You can see what analysts are predicting for Essentra in this interactive graph of future profit estimates.

What About Dividends?

When looking at investment returns, it is important to consider the difference between total shareholder return (TSR) and share price return. Whereas the share price return only reflects the change in the share price, the TSR includes the value of dividends (assuming they were reinvested) and the benefit of any discounted capital raising or spin-off. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. In the case of Essentra, it has a TSR of -43% for the last 5 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!

A Different Perspective

While the broader market gained around 10% in the last year, Essentra shareholders lost 4.6% (even including dividends). 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. Unfortunately, longer term shareholders are suffering worse, given the loss of 7% doled out over the last five years. We'd need to see some sustained improvements in the key metrics before we could muster much enthusiasm. I find it very interesting to look at share price over the long term as a proxy for business performance. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. Consider for instance, the ever-present spectre of investment risk. We've identified 2 warning signs with Essentra , and understanding them should be part of your investment process.