Yahoo Finance If You Had Bought Mesoblast (ASX:MSB) Stock Five Years Ago, You'd Be Sitting On A 69% Loss, Today
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Statistically speaking, long term investing is a profitable endeavour. But unfortunately, some companies simply don't succeed. To wit, the Mesoblast Limited (ASX:MSB) share price managed to fall 69% over five long years. That's not a lot of fun for true believers. It's up 4.8% in the last seven days.
View our latest analysis for Mesoblast
Mesoblast isn't currently profitable, so most analysts would look to revenue growth to get an idea of how fast the underlying business is growing. Generally speaking, companies without profits are expected to grow revenue every year, and at a good clip. Some companies are willing to postpone profitability to grow revenue faster, but in that case one does expect good top-line growth.
In the last five years Mesoblast saw its revenue shrink by 9.3% per year. That puts it in an unattractive cohort, to put it mildly. Arguably, the market has responded appropriately to this business performance by sending the share price down 21% (annualized) in the same time period. It's fair to say most investors don't like to invest in loss making companies with falling revenue. This looks like a really risky stock to buy, at a glance.
You can see how earnings and revenue have changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).
This free interactive report on Mesoblast's balance sheet strength is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.
A Different Perspective
Investors in Mesoblast had a tough year, with a total loss of 3.7%, against a market gain of about 12%. However, keep in mind that even the best stocks will sometimes underperform the market over a twelve month period. However, the loss over the last year isn't as bad as the 21% per annum loss investors have suffered over the last half decade. We'd need to see some sustained improvements in the key metrics before we could muster much enthusiasm. You could get a better understanding of Mesoblast's growth by checking out this more detailed historical graph of earnings, revenue and cash flow.
If you are like me, then you will not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.
Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on AU exchanges.
We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.
If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
