We think intelligent long term investing is the way to go. But that doesn’t mean long term investors can avoid big losses. For example, after five long years the Sapura Energy Berhad (KLSE:SAPNRG) share price is a whole 53% lower. We certainly feel for shareholders who bought near the top.

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.

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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 way to examine how market sentiment has changed over time is to look at the interaction between a company’s share price and its earnings per share (EPS).

Sapura Energy Berhad became profitable within the last five years. Most would consider that to be a good thing, so it’s counter-intuitive to see the share price declining. Other metrics might give us a better handle on how its value is changing over time.

It could be that the revenue decline of 5.9% per year is viewed as evidence that Sapura Energy Berhad is shrinking. This has probably encouraged some shareholders to sell down the stock.

You can see how earnings and revenue have changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).

We know that Sapura Energy Berhad has improved its bottom line over the last three years, but what does the future have in store? It might be well worthwhile taking a look at our free report on how its financial position has changed over time.

While the broader market lost about 0.09% in the twelve months, Sapura Energy Berhad shareholders did even worse, losing 10.0%. However, it could simply be that the share price has been impacted by broader market jitters. It might be worth keeping an eye on the fundamentals, in case there’s a good opportunity. Unfortunately, longer term shareholders are suffering worse, given the loss of 9% doled out over the last five years. We’d need to see some sustained improvements in the key metrics before we could muster much enthusiasm. It’s always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Sapura Energy Berhad better, we need to consider many other factors. To that end, you should learn about the 5 warning signs we’ve spotted with Sapura Energy Berhad (including 4 which can’t be ignored) .