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SUTL Enterprise (SGX:BHU) jumps 11% this week, though earnings growth is still tracking behind three-year shareholder returns

Simply Wall St · 5d ago

By buying an index fund, investors can approximate the average market return. But if you buy good businesses at attractive prices, your portfolio returns could exceed the average market return. For example, the SUTL Enterprise Limited (SGX:BHU) share price is up 86% in the last three years, clearly besting the market return of around 30% (not including dividends). On the other hand, the returns haven't been quite so good recently, with shareholders up just 44%, including dividends.

Since the stock has added S$8.0m to its market cap in the past week alone, let's see if underlying performance has been driving long-term returns.

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While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just underlying business performance. 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).

SUTL Enterprise was able to grow its EPS at 8.9% per year over three years, sending the share price higher. This EPS growth is lower than the 23% average annual increase in the share price. This indicates that the market is feeling more optimistic on the stock, after the last few years of progress. That's not necessarily surprising considering the three-year track record of earnings 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
SGX:BHU Earnings Per Share Growth January 2nd 2026

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. 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. It's fair to say that the TSR gives a more complete picture for stocks that pay a dividend. We note that for SUTL Enterprise the TSR over the last 3 years was 135%, 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 SUTL Enterprise shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 44% over one year. And that does include the dividend. Since the one-year TSR is better than the five-year TSR (the latter coming in at 25% per year), it would seem that the stock's performance has improved in recent times. 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. But to understand SUTL Enterprise better, we need to consider many other factors. Case in point: We've spotted 2 warning signs for SUTL Enterprise you should be aware of, and 1 of them is a bit concerning.

We will like SUTL Enterprise better if we see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of undervalued stocks (mostly small caps) 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 Singaporean exchanges.