CH Offshore (SGX:C13) adds S$6.3m to market cap in the past 7 days, though investors from a year ago are still down 37%

CH Offshore Ltd. (SGX:C13) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 29% in the last month. But that is minimal compensation for the share price under-performance over the last year. In fact the stock is down 65% in the last year, well below the market return.

While the stock has risen 20% in the past week but long term shareholders are still in the red, let's see what the fundamentals can tell us.

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There is no denying that markets are sometimes efficient, but prices do not always reflect underlying business performance. One flawed but reasonable way to assess how sentiment around a company has changed is to compare the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price.

During the last year CH Offshore grew its earnings per share, moving from a loss to a profit.

The result looks like a strong improvement to us, so we're surprised the market has sold down the shares. If the company can sustain the earnings growth, this might be an inflection point for the business, which would make right now a really interesting time to study it more closely.

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

It's probably worth noting we've seen significant insider buying in the last quarter, which we consider a positive. That said, we think earnings and revenue growth trends are even more important factors to consider. This free interactive report on CH Offshore's earnings, revenue and cash flow is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

What About The Total Shareholder Return (TSR)?

We'd be remiss not to mention the difference between CH Offshore's total shareholder return (TSR) and its share price return. 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. CH Offshore's TSR of was a loss of 37% for the 1 year. That wasn't as bad as its share price return, because it has paid dividends.

A Different Perspective

CH Offshore shareholders are down 37% for the year, but the market itself is up 25%. 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. Unfortunately, last year's performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 3% over the last half decade. Generally speaking long term share price weakness can be a bad sign, though contrarian investors might want to research the stock in hope of a turnaround. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand CH Offshore better, we need to consider many other factors. To that end, you should learn about the 3 warning signs we've spotted with CH Offshore (including 2 which don't sit too well with us) .

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Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on Singaporean exchanges.