While not a mind-blowing move, it is good to see that the Quartix Technologies plc (LON:QTX) share price has gained 26% in the last three months. But that doesn’t change the fact that the returns over the last three years have been less than pleasing. In fact, the share price is down 46% in the last three years, falling well short of the market return.

Since shareholders are down over the longer term, lets look at the underlying fundamentals over the that time and see if they’ve been consistent with returns.

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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.

Quartix Technologies 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. So it’s worth looking at other metrics to try to understand the share price move.

We note that, in three years, revenue has actually grown at a 8.2% annual rate, so that doesn’t seem to be a reason to sell shares. This analysis is just perfunctory, but it might be worth researching Quartix Technologies more closely, as sometimes stocks fall unfairly. This could present an opportunity.

The graphic below depicts how earnings and revenue have changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).

We know that Quartix Technologies has improved its bottom line lately, but what does the future have in store? So it makes a lot of sense to check out what analysts think Quartix Technologies will earn in the future (free profit forecasts) .

It is important to consider the total shareholder return, as well as the share price return, for any given stock. 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 Quartix Technologies, it has a TSR of -42% for the last 3 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!

It’s nice to see that Quartix Technologies shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 20% over the last year. And that does include the dividend. Notably the five-year annualised TSR loss of 3% per year compares very unfavourably with the recent share price performance. This makes us a little wary, but the business might have turned around its fortunes. While it is well worth considering the different impacts that market conditions can have on the share price, there are other factors that are even more important. Case in point: We’ve spotted 2 warning signs for Quartix Technologies you should be aware of.