By buying an index fund, you can roughly match the market return with ease. But if you pick the right individual stocks, you could make more than that. For example, GetBusy plc (LON:GETB) shareholders have seen the share price rise 40% over three years, well in excess of the market return (29%, not including dividends).

So let’s investigate and see if the longer term performance of the company has been in line with the underlying business’ progress.

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While GetBusy made a small profit, in the last year, we think that the market is probably more focussed on the top line growth at the moment. Generally speaking, we’d consider a stock like this alongside loss-making companies, simply because the quantum of the profit is so low. For shareholders to have confidence a company will grow profits significantly, it must grow revenue.

GetBusy’s revenue trended up 6.4% each year over three years. That’s not a very high growth rate considering it doesn’t make profits. In that time the share price is up 12% per year, which is not unreasonable given the revenue growth. The real question is when the business will generate profits, and how quickly they will grow. Given the market doesn’t seem too excited about the stock, a closer look at the financial data could pay off, if you can find indications of a stronger growth trend in the future.

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. On the other hand, we think the revenue and earnings trends are much more meaningful measures of the business. So it makes a lot of sense to check out what analysts think GetBusy will earn in the future (free profit forecasts).

It’s nice to see that GetBusy shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 39% over the last year. That’s better than the annualised return of 1.9% over half a decade, implying that the company is doing better recently. Someone with an optimistic perspective could view the recent improvement in TSR as indicating that the business itself is getting better with time. It’s always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand GetBusy better, we need to consider many other factors. Even so, be aware that GetBusy is showing 5 warning signs in our investment analysis , and 3 of those are a bit concerning…