Yahoo Finance Shareholders in Schroders (LON:SDR) are in the red if they invested a year ago
Passive investing in an index fund is a good way to ensure your own returns roughly match the overall market. But if you buy individual stocks, you can do both better or worse than that. Investors in Schroders plc (LON:SDR) have tasted that bitter downside in the last year, as the share price dropped 19%. That contrasts poorly with the market decline of 0.5%. At least the damage isn't so bad if you look at the last three years, since the stock is down 9.5% in that time. The falls have accelerated recently, with the share price down 16% in the last three months. But this could be related to the weak market, which is down 9.1% in the same period.
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 Schroders
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).
Even though the Schroders share price is down over the year, its EPS actually improved. It's quite possible that growth expectations may have been unreasonable in the past.
It's fair to say that the share price does not seem to be reflecting the EPS growth. So it's easy to justify a look at some other metrics.
We don't see any weakness in the Schroders' dividend so the steady payout can't really explain the share price drop. From what we can see, revenue is pretty flat, so that doesn't really explain the share price drop. Of course, it could simply be that it simply fell short of the market consensus expectations.
The image below shows how earnings and revenue have tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).
Schroders is well known by investors, and plenty of clever analysts have tried to predict the future profit levels. You can see what analysts are predicting for Schroders in this interactive graph of future profit estimates.
What About Dividends?
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. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. As it happens, Schroders' TSR for the last 1 year was -16%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!
A Different Perspective
While the broader market lost about 0.5% in the twelve months, Schroders shareholders did even worse, losing 16% (even including dividends). Having said that, it's inevitable that some stocks will be oversold in a falling market. The key is to keep your eyes on the fundamental developments. Longer term investors wouldn't be so upset, since they would have made 1.8%, each year, over five years. It could be that the recent sell-off is an opportunity, so it may be worth checking the fundamental data for signs of a long term growth trend. Before spending more time on Schroders it might be wise to click here to see if insiders have been buying or selling shares.
We will like Schroders better if we see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of growing companies with considerable, recent, insider buying.
Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on GB exchanges.
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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
