If you want to compound wealth in the stock market, you can do so by buying an index fund. But the truth is, you can make significant gains if you buy good quality businesses at the right price. For example, the J.W. Mays, Inc. (NASDAQ:MAYS) share price is up 67% in the last five years, slightly above the market return. In stark contrast, the stock price has actually fallen 8.6% in the last year.

With that in mind, it’s worth seeing if the company’s underlying fundamentals have been the driver of long term performance, or if there are some discrepancies.

This technology could replace computers: discover the 20 stocks are working to make quantum computing a reality.

J.W. Mays isn’t currently profitable, so most analysts would look to revenue growth to get an idea of how fast the underlying business is growing. When a company doesn’t make profits, we’d generally hope to see good 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.

In the last 5 years J.W. Mays saw its revenue grow at 2.9% per year. That’s not a very high growth rate considering the bottom line. The modest growth is probably broadly reflected in the share price, which is up 11%, per year over 5 years. The business could be one worth watching but we generally prefer faster revenue growth.

You can see how earnings and revenue have changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).

This free interactive report on J.W. Mays’ balance sheet strength is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

J.W. Mays shareholders are down 8.6% for the year, but the market itself is up 14%. However, keep in mind that even the best stocks will sometimes underperform the market over a twelve month period. On the bright side, long term shareholders have made money, with a gain of 11% per year over half a decade. It could be that the recent sell-off is an opportunity, so it may be worth checking the fundamental data for signs of a long term growth trend. 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. For instance, we’ve identified 2 warning signs for J.W. Mays (1 is a bit unpleasant) that you should be aware of.

Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking elsewhere. So take a peek at this free list of companies we expect will grow earnings.