When you buy and hold a stock for the long term, you definitely want it to provide a positive return. But more than that, you probably want to see it rise more than the market average. Unfortunately for shareholders, while the J.W. Mays, Inc. (NASDAQ:MAYS) share price is up 78% in the last five years, that’s less than the market return. The last year has been disappointing, with the stock price down 13% in that time.

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

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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. Shareholders of unprofitable companies usually desire strong revenue growth. That’s because it’s hard to be confident a company will be sustainable if revenue growth is negligible, and it never makes a profit.

In the last 5 years J.W. Mays saw its revenue grow at 2.8% per year. That’s not a very high growth rate considering the bottom line. It’s probably fair to say that the modest growth is reflected in the modest share price gain of 12% per year. It seems likely that we’ll have to zoom in on the data, including profits, to understand if there is an opportunity here.

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

If you are thinking of buying or selling J.W. Mays stock, you should check out this FREE detailed report on its balance sheet.

J.W. Mays shareholders are down 13% for the year, but the market itself is up 12%. 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. Longer term investors wouldn’t be so upset, since they would have made 12%, each year, over five years. 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 example, we’ve discovered 2 warning signs for J.W. Mays (1 is potentially serious!) that you should be aware of before investing here.

If you would prefer to check out another company — one with potentially superior financials — then do not miss this free list of companies that have proven they can grow earnings.