For many, the main point of investing in the stock market is to achieve spectacular returns. And we've seen some truly amazing gains over the years. To wit, the Imugene Limited (ASX:IMU) share price has soared 361% over five years. This just goes to show the value creation that some businesses can achieve.

Now it's worth having a look at the company's fundamentals too, because that will help us determine if the long term shareholder return has matched the performance of the underlying business.

Check out our latest analysis for Imugene

Imugene isn't currently profitable, so most analysts would look to revenue growth to get an idea of how fast the underlying business is growing. When a company doesn't make profits, we'd generally hope to see good revenue growth. As you can imagine, fast revenue growth, when maintained, often leads to fast profit growth.

In the last 5 years Imugene saw its revenue grow at 30% per year. Even measured against other revenue-focussed companies, that's a good result. Fortunately, the market has not missed this, and has pushed the share price up by 36% per year in that time. It's never too late to start following a top notch stock like Imugene, since some long term winners go on winning for decades. So we'd recommend you take a closer look at this one, but keep in mind the market seems optimistic.

You can see how earnings and revenue have changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).

We like that insiders have been buying shares in the last twelve months. Having said that, most people consider earnings and revenue growth trends to be a more meaningful guide to the business. So it makes a lot of sense to check out what analysts think Imugene will earn in the future (free profit forecasts).

A Different Perspective

Investors in Imugene had a tough year, with a total loss of 36%, against a market gain of about 10.0%. 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. Longer term investors wouldn't be so upset, since they would have made 36%, each year, over five years. If the fundamental data continues to indicate long term sustainable growth, the current sell-off could be an opportunity worth considering. 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 1 warning sign with Imugene , and understanding them should be part of your investment process.