In order to justify the effort of selecting individual stocks, it’s worth striving to beat the returns from a market index fund. But its virtually certain that sometimes you will buy stocks that fall short of the market average returns. Unfortunately, that’s been the case for longer term NewtekOne, Inc. (NASDAQ:NEWT) shareholders, since the share price is down 55% in the last three years, falling well short of the market return of around 22%. The last week also saw the share price slip down another 9.7%.

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

View our latest analysis for NewtekOne

While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just underlying business performance. 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.

During the three years that the share price fell, NewtekOne’s earnings per share (EPS) dropped by 24% each year. So do you think it’s a coincidence that the share price has dropped 23% per year, a very similar rate to the EPS? We don’t. So it seems like sentiment towards the stock hasn’t changed all that much over time. It seems like the share price is reflecting the declining earnings per share.

The company’s earnings per share (over time) is depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).

It’s good to see that there was some significant insider buying in the last three months. That’s a positive. That said, we think earnings and revenue growth trends are even more important factors to consider. Before buying or selling a stock, we always recommend a close examination of historic growth trends, available here..

It is important to consider the total shareholder return, as well as the share price return, for any given stock. Whereas the share price return only reflects the change in the share price, the TSR includes the value of dividends (assuming they were reinvested) and the benefit of any discounted capital raising or spin-off. It’s fair to say that the TSR gives a more complete picture for stocks that pay a dividend. In the case of NewtekOne, it has a TSR of -43% for the last 3 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. And there’s no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!

NewtekOne shareholders are down 6.5% for the year (even including dividends), but the market itself is up 24%. However, keep in mind that even the best stocks will sometimes underperform the market over a twelve month period. Unfortunately, last year’s performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 2% over the last half decade. We realise that Baron Rothschild has said investors should “buy when there is blood on the streets”, but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality 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. Take risks, for example – NewtekOne has 4 warning signs (and 2 which are a bit unpleasant) we think you should know about.