When you buy and hold a stock for the long term, you definitely want it to provide a positive return. Better yet, you’d like to see the share price move up more than the market average. But Maximus, Inc. (NYSE:MMS) 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 18% 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.

We’ve found 21 US stocks that are forecast to pay a dividend yield of over 6% next year. See the full list for free.

To paraphrase Benjamin Graham: Over the short term the market is a voting machine, but over the long term it’s a weighing machine. By comparing earnings per share (EPS) and share price changes over time, we can get a feel for how investor attitudes to a company have morphed over time.

Over half a decade, Maximus managed to grow its earnings per share at 5.8% a year. This EPS growth is higher than the 4% average annual increase in the share price. Therefore, it seems the market has become relatively pessimistic about the company.

You can see below how EPS has changed over time (discover the exact values by clicking on the image).

We like that insiders have been buying shares in the last twelve months. Even so, future earnings will be far more important to whether current shareholders make money. Dive deeper into the earnings by checking this interactive graph of Maximus’ earnings, revenue and cash flow.

It is important to consider the total shareholder return, as well as the share price return, for any given stock. The TSR is a return calculation that accounts for the value of cash dividends (assuming that any dividend received was reinvested) and the calculated value of any discounted capital raisings and spin-offs. Arguably, the TSR gives a more comprehensive picture of the return generated by a stock. As it happens, Maximus’ TSR for the last 5 years was 32%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. And there’s no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!

Investors in Maximus had a tough year, with a total loss of 17% (including dividends), against a market gain of about 9.5%. 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. On the bright side, long term shareholders have made money, with a gain of 6% per year over half a decade. If the fundamental data continues to indicate long term sustainable growth, the current sell-off could be an opportunity worth considering. 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 be aware of the 2 warning signs we’ve spotted with Maximus .