Buying shares in the best businesses can build meaningful wealth for you and your family. While the best companies are hard to find, but they can generate massive returns over long periods. For example, the Cerillion Plc (LON:CER) share price is up a whopping 363% in the last half decade, a handsome return for long term holders. If that doesn’t get you thinking about long term investing, we don’t know what will. And in the last week the share price has popped 5.0%.

So let’s assess the underlying fundamentals over the last 5 years and see if they’ve moved in lock-step with shareholder returns.

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To paraphrase Benjamin Graham: Over the short term the market is a voting machine, but over the long term it’s a weighing machine. One imperfect but simple way to consider how the market perception of a company has shifted is to compare the change in the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price movement.

Over half a decade, Cerillion managed to grow its earnings per share at 28% a year. This EPS growth is lower than the 36% average annual increase in the share price. So it’s fair to assume the market has a higher opinion of the business than it did five years ago. That’s not necessarily surprising considering the five-year track record of earnings growth.

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

This free interactive report on Cerillion’s earnings, revenue and cash flow is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). 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. It’s fair to say that the TSR gives a more complete picture for stocks that pay a dividend. We note that for Cerillion the TSR over the last 5 years was 384%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.

While the broader market gained around 27% in the last year, Cerillion shareholders lost 20% (even including dividends). 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 37% per year over half a decade. If the fundamental data continues to indicate long term sustainable growth, the current sell-off could be an opportunity worth considering. If you would like to research Cerillion in more detail then you might want to take a look at whether insiders have been buying or selling shares in the company.