Long term investing can be life changing when you buy and hold the truly great businesses. While not every stock performs well, when investors win, they can win big. To wit, the Sylvania Platinum Limited (LON:SLP) share price has soared 308% over five years. If that doesn't get you thinking about long term investing, we don't know what will. Better yet, the share price has risen 7.8% in the last week.

So let's investigate and see if the longer term performance of the company has been in line with the underlying business' progress.

See our latest analysis for Sylvania Platinum

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, Sylvania Platinum managed to grow its earnings per share at 35% a year. So the EPS growth rate is rather close to the annualized share price gain of 32% per year. That suggests that the market sentiment around the company hasn't changed much over that time. In fact, the share price seems to largely reflect the EPS growth.

The company's earnings per share (over time) is depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).

It might be well worthwhile taking a look at our free report on Sylvania Platinum's earnings, revenue and cash flow.

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 is a return calculation that accounts for the value of cash dividends (assuming that any dividend received was reinvested) and the calculated value of any discounted capital raisings and spin-offs. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. We note that for Sylvania Platinum the TSR over the last 5 years was 458%, 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!

A Different Perspective

Sylvania Platinum shareholders are down 16% for the year (even including dividends), but the market itself is up 0.8%. 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 41% 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 Sylvania Platinum better, we need to consider many other factors. For instance, we've identified 2 warning signs for Sylvania Platinum (1 shouldn't be ignored) that you should be aware of.