Those who invested in Waters (NYSE:WAT) five years ago are up 34%

Simply Wall St · 07/01/2024 10:12

While Waters Corporation (NYSE:WAT) shareholders are probably generally happy, the stock hasn't had particularly good run recently, with the share price falling 15% in the last quarter. On the bright side the share price is up over the last half decade. Unfortunately its return of 34% is below the market return of 95%.

Let's take a look at the underlying fundamentals over the longer term, and see if they've been consistent with shareholders returns.

See our latest analysis for Waters

To quote Buffett, 'Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace...' 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.

Over half a decade, Waters managed to grow its earnings per share at 5.3% a year. So the EPS growth rate is rather close to the annualized share price gain of 6% per year. This indicates that investor sentiment towards the company has not changed a great deal. Rather, the share price has approximately tracked EPS growth.

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

earnings-per-share-growth
NYSE:WAT Earnings Per Share Growth July 1st 2024

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. This free interactive report on Waters' earnings, revenue and cash flow is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

A Different Perspective

Waters shareholders are up 9.6% for the year. But that return falls short of the market. The silver lining is that the gain was actually better than the average annual return of 6% per year over five year. This could indicate that the company is winning over new investors, as it pursues its strategy. I find it very interesting to look at share price over the long term as a proxy for business performance. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. To that end, you should be aware of the 1 warning sign we've spotted with Waters .

Waters is not the only stock insiders are buying. So take a peek at this free list of small cap companies at attractive valuations which insiders have been buying.

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