Long term investing works well, but it doesn’t always work for each individual stock. We really hate to see fellow investors lose their hard-earned money. For example, we sympathize with anyone who was caught holding Infotrust Ltd (ASX:ITS) during the five years that saw its share price drop a whopping 87%. While a drop like that is definitely a body blow, money isn’t as important as health and happiness.

It’s worthwhile assessing if the company’s economics have been moving in lockstep with these underwhelming shareholder returns, or if there is some disparity between the two. So let’s do just that.

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Given that Infotrust didn’t make a profit in the last twelve months, we’ll focus on revenue growth to form a quick view of its business development. Shareholders of unprofitable companies usually desire strong revenue growth. Some companies are willing to postpone profitability to grow revenue faster, but in that case one would hope for good top-line growth to make up for the lack of earnings.

Over five years, Infotrust grew its revenue at 10% per year. That’s a fairly respectable growth rate. So it is unexpected to see the stock down 13% per year in the last five years. The market can be a harsh master when your company is losing money and revenue growth disappoints.

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

We consider it positive that insiders have made significant purchases in the last year. 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 Infotrust will earn in the future (free profit forecasts).

While the broader market gained around 5.9% in the last year, Infotrust shareholders lost 8.9%. 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. However, the loss over the last year isn’t as bad as the 13% per annum loss investors have suffered over the last half decade. We would want clear information suggesting the company will grow, before taking the view that the share price will stabilize. 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 Infotrust you should be aware of, and 1 of them makes us a bit uncomfortable.