If you buy and hold a stock for many years, you'd hope to be making a profit. Better yet, you'd like to see the share price move up more than the market average. Unfortunately for shareholders, while the TTM Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTMI) share price is up 20% in the last five years, that's less than the market return. Over the last twelve months the stock price has risen a very respectable 5.9%.

Since the stock has added US$79m to its market cap in the past week alone, let's see if underlying performance has been driving long-term returns.

View our latest analysis for TTM Technologies

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 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.

TTM Technologies' earnings per share are down 34% per year, despite strong share price performance over five years.

The strong decline in earnings per share suggests the market isn't using EPS to judge the company. Given that EPS is down, but the share price is up, it seems clear the market is focussed on other aspects of the business, at the moment.

It is not great to see that revenue has dropped by 4.9% per year over five years. So it seems one might have to take closer look at earnings and revenue trends to see how they might influence the share price.

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 TTM Technologies' balance sheet strength is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

A Different Perspective

TTM Technologies shareholders gained a total return of 5.9% during the year. But that return falls short of the market. On the bright side, that's still a gain, and it's actually better than the average return of 4% over half a decade This could indicate that the company is winning over new investors, as it pursues its strategy. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand TTM Technologies better, we need to consider many other factors. Like risks, for instance. Every company has them, and we've spotted 4 warning signs for TTM Technologies (of which 1 is potentially serious!) you should know about.

If you like to buy stocks alongside management, then you might just love this free list of companies. (Hint: insiders have been buying them).

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

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.

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