It might be of some concern to shareholders to see the Marchex, Inc. (NASDAQ:MCHX) share price down 11% in the last month. While that might be a setback, it doesn’t negate the nice returns received over the last twelve months. After all, the share price is up a market-beating 47% in that time.

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.

See our latest analysis for Marchex

Given that Marchex 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. 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.

Marchex actually shrunk its revenue over the last year, with a reduction of 2.4%. Despite the lack of revenue growth, the stock has returned a solid 47% the last twelve months. To us that means that there isn’t a lot of correlation between the past revenue performance and the share price, but a closer look at analyst forecasts and the bottom line may well explain a lot.

You can see below how earnings and revenue have changed over time (discover the exact values by clicking on the image).

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. You can see what analysts are predicting for Marchex in this interactive graph of future profit estimates.

It’s good to see that Marchex has rewarded shareholders with a total shareholder return of 47% in the last twelve months. That certainly beats the loss of about 8% per year over the last half decade. We generally put more weight on the long term performance over the short term, but the recent improvement could hint at a (positive) inflection point within the business. 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 4 warning signs for Marchex (1 can’t be ignored) that you should be aware of.

Marchex is not the only stock that insiders are buying. For those who like to find lesser know companies this free list of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket.