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 the bright side, if you buy shares in a high quality company at the right price, you can gain well over 100%. Long term IVU Traffic Technologies AG (ETR:IVU) shareholders would be well aware of this, since the stock is up 187% in five years. It's also up 13% in about a month. But this could be related to good market conditions -- stocks in its market are up 6.2% in the last month.

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 IVU Traffic Technologies

There is no denying that markets are sometimes efficient, but prices do not always reflect underlying business performance. One flawed but reasonable way to assess how sentiment around a company has changed is to compare the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price.

During five years of share price growth, IVU Traffic Technologies achieved compound earnings per share (EPS) growth of 14% per year. This EPS growth is lower than the 23% average annual increase in the share price. This suggests that market participants hold the company in higher regard, these days. That's not necessarily surprising considering the five-year track record of earnings growth.

You can see how EPS has changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).

It might be well worthwhile taking a look at our free report on IVU Traffic Technologies' 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. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. In the case of IVU Traffic Technologies, it has a TSR of 206% 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

Investors in IVU Traffic Technologies had a tough year, with a total loss of 6.5% (including dividends), against a market gain of about 4.9%. 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 25%, 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. Before forming an opinion on IVU Traffic Technologies you might want to consider these 3 valuation metrics.