Yahoo Finance Earnings are growing at Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) but shareholders still don't like its prospects
Investors can approximate the average market return by buying an index fund. But if you buy individual stocks, you can do both better or worse than that. That downside risk was realized by Bank of America Corporation (NYSE:BAC) shareholders over the last year, as the share price declined 20%. That contrasts poorly with the market return of 11%. The silver lining (for longer term investors) is that the stock is still 6.3% higher than it was three years ago. The falls have accelerated recently, with the share price down 11% in the last three months. But this could be related to the weak market, which is down 4.9% in the same period.
With the stock having lost 4.6% in the past week, it's worth taking a look at business performance and seeing if there's any red flags.
View our latest analysis for Bank of America
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).
During the unfortunate twelve months during which the Bank of America share price fell, it actually saw its earnings per share (EPS) improve by 8.3%. Of course, the situation might betray previous over-optimism about growth.
The divergence between the EPS and the share price is quite notable, during the year. So it's easy to justify a look at some other metrics.
Bank of America managed to grow revenue over the last year, which is usually a real positive. Since we can't easily explain the share price movement based on these metrics, it might be worth considering how market sentiment has changed towards the stock.
You can see how earnings and revenue have changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).
Bank of America is a well known stock, with plenty of analyst coverage, suggesting some visibility into future growth. So we recommend checking out this free report showing consensus forecasts
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. As it happens, Bank of America's TSR for the last 1 year was -18%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.
A Different Perspective
Bank of America shareholders are down 18% for the year (even including dividends), but the market itself is up 11%. Even the share prices of good stocks drop sometimes, but we want to see improvements in the fundamental metrics of a business, before getting too interested. Unfortunately, last year's performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 0.5% over the last half decade. We realise that Baron Rothschild has said investors should "buy when there is blood on the streets", but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality business. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Bank of America better, we need to consider many other factors. For instance, we've identified 2 warning signs for Bank of America (1 makes us a bit uncomfortable) that you should be aware of.
If you are like me, then you will not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.
Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on American 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.
