If you buy and hold a stock for many years, you’d hope to be making a profit. Better yet, you’d like to see the share price move up more than the market average. But Silvercrest Asset Management Group Inc. (NASDAQ:SAMG) has fallen short of that second goal, with a share price rise of 22% over five years, which is below the market return. The last year has been disappointing, with the stock price down 0.7% 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.

Trump has pledged to “unleash” American oil and gas and these 15 US stocks have developments that are poised to benefit.

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.

During five years of share price growth, Silvercrest Asset Management Group actually saw its EPS drop 6.8% per year.

Since the EPS are down strongly, it seems highly unlikely market participants are looking at EPS to value the company. The falling EPS doesn’t correlate with the climbing share price, so it’s worth taking a look at other metrics.

We note that the dividend is higher than it was previously – always nice to see. Maybe dividend investors have helped support the share price.

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

You can see how its balance sheet has strengthened (or weakened) over time in this free interactive graphic.

It is important to consider the total shareholder return, as well as the share price return, for any given stock. 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. Arguably, the TSR gives a more comprehensive picture of the return generated by a stock. In the case of Silvercrest Asset Management Group, it has a TSR of 51% for the last 5 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.

Silvercrest Asset Management Group shareholders are up 4.2% for the year (even including dividends). Unfortunately this falls short of the market return. On the bright side, the longer term returns (running at about 9% a year, over half a decade) look better. Maybe the share price is just taking a breather while the business executes on its growth strategy. Keeping this in mind, a solid next step might be to take a look at Silvercrest Asset Management Group’s dividend track record. This free interactive graph is a great place to start.