Investors Who Bought Ecolab (NYSE:ECL) Shares Five Years Ago Are Now Up 41%

It hasn't been the best quarter for Ecolab Inc. (NYSE:ECL) shareholders, since the share price has fallen 16% in that time. While that's not great, the returns over five years have been decent. It's good to see the share price is up 41% in that time, better than its market return of 36%.

View our latest analysis for Ecolab

While the efficient markets hypothesis continues to be taught by some, it has been proven that markets are over-reactive dynamic systems, and investors are not always rational. By comparing earnings per share (EPS) and share price changes over time, we can get a feel for how investor attitudes to a company have morphed over time.

Over half a decade, Ecolab managed to grow its earnings per share at 6.2% a year. This EPS growth is reasonably close to the 7.1% average annual increase in the share price. This indicates that investor sentiment towards the company has not changed a great deal. In fact, the share price seems to largely reflect the EPS growth.

You can see how EPS has changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).

It might be well worthwhile taking a look at our free report on Ecolab's earnings, revenue and cash flow.

What About Dividends?

When looking at investment returns, it is important to consider the difference between total shareholder return (TSR) and share price return. 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. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. As it happens, Ecolab's TSR for the last 5 years was 49%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!

A Different Perspective

Ecolab shareholders are down 8.5% over twelve months (even including dividends) , which isn't far from the market return of -8.5%. The silver lining is that longer term investors would have made a total return of 8.3% per year over half a decade. If the stock price has been impacted by changing sentiment, rather than deteriorating business conditions, it could spell opportunity. 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. Even so, be aware that Ecolab is showing 2 warning signs in our investment analysis , you should know about...

Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking elsewhere. So take a peek at this free list of companies we expect will grow earnings.

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

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