The main point of investing for the long term is to make money. But more than that, you probably want to see it rise more than the market average. But Thomson Medical Group Limited (SGX:A50) has fallen short of that second goal, with a share price rise of 27% over five years, which is below the market return. On a brighter note, more newer shareholders are probably rather content with the 24% share price gain over twelve months.

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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Thomson Medical Group 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. 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 Thomson Medical Group saw its revenue grow at 14% per year. That’s a fairly respectable growth rate. The annual gain of 5% over five years is better than nothing, but falls short of the market. You could even argue that the share price was over optimistic, previously.

The image below shows how earnings and revenue have tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).

Take a more thorough look at Thomson Medical Group’s financial health with this free report on its balance sheet.

We’d be remiss not to mention the difference between Thomson Medical Group’s total shareholder return (TSR) and its share price return. The TSR attempts to capture the value of dividends (as if they were reinvested) as well as any spin-offs or discounted capital raisings offered to shareholders. Its history of dividend payouts mean that Thomson Medical Group’s TSR of 30% over the last 5 years is better than the share price return.

Thomson Medical Group shareholders are up 24% for the year. But that was short of the market average. The silver lining is that the gain was actually better than the average annual return of 5% per year over five year. It is possible that returns will improve along with the business fundamentals. 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. To that end, you should learn about the 2 warning signs we’ve spotted with Thomson Medical Group (including 1 which is a bit unpleasant) .