The main point of investing for the long term is to make money. Furthermore, you’d generally like to see the share price rise faster than the market. Unfortunately for shareholders, while the CSX Corporation (NASDAQ:CSX) share price is up 14% in the last five years, that’s less than the market return. Zooming in, the stock is up a respectable 9.6% in the last year.

Let’s take a look at the underlying fundamentals over the longer term, and see if they’ve been consistent with shareholders returns.

AI is about to change healthcare. These 20 stocks are working on everything from early diagnostics to drug discovery. The best part – they are all under $10bn in marketcap – there is still time to get in early.

In his essay The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville Warren Buffett described how share prices do not always rationally reflect the value of a business. One way to examine how market sentiment has changed over time is to look at the interaction between a company’s share price and its earnings per share (EPS).

Over half a decade, CSX managed to grow its earnings per share at 5.3% a year. This EPS growth is higher than the 3% average annual increase in the share price. So one could conclude that the broader market has become more cautious towards the stock.

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

It’s probably worth noting we’ve seen significant insider buying in the last quarter, which we consider a positive. That said, we think earnings and revenue growth trends are even more important factors to consider. This free interactive report on CSX’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 is a return calculation that accounts for the value of cash dividends (assuming that any dividend received was reinvested) and the calculated value of any discounted capital raisings and spin-offs. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. We note that for CSX the TSR over the last 5 years was 22%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. And there’s no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!

CSX provided a TSR of 11% over the last twelve months. But that return falls short of the market. On the bright side, that’s still a gain, and it’s actually better than the average return of 4% over half a decade This suggests the company might be improving over time. 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. Case in point: We’ve spotted 1 warning sign for CSX you should be aware of.