It hasn't been the best quarter for $UNITED OVERSEAS BANK LIMITED(U11.SI)$ shareholders, since the share price has fallen 17% in that time. Looking further back, the stock has generated good profits over five years. It has returned a market beating 17% in that time.
Since the long term performance has been good but there's been a recent pullback of 3.1%, let's check if the fundamentals match the share price.
In his essay The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville Warren Buffett described how share prices do not always rationally reflect the value of a business. One imperfect but simple way to consider how the market perception of a company has shifted is to compare the change in the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price movement.
During the five years of share price growth, United Overseas Bank moved from a loss to profitability. That's generally thought to be a genuine positive, so we would expect to see an increasing share price.
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..
What About Dividends?
It is important to consider the total shareholder return, as well as the share price return, for any given stock. 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. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. We note that for United Overseas Bank the TSR over the last 5 years was 45%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.
A Different Perspective
We're pleased to report that United Overseas Bank shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 8.3% over one year. Of course, that includes the dividend. That's better than the annualised return of 8% over half a decade, implying that the company is doing better recently. Someone with an optimistic perspective could view the recent improvement in TSR as indicating that the business itself is getting better with time. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term.
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