When you buy shares in a company, there is always a risk that the price drops to zero. But when you pick a company that is really flourishing, you can make more than 100%. For example, the Nordstrom, Inc. (NYSE:JWN) share price has soared 126% return in just a single year. Zooming out, the stock is actually down 24% in the last three years.
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 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.
During the last year Nordstrom saw its earnings per share (EPS) drop below zero. While this may prove temporary, we'd consider it a negative, so we would not have expected to see the share price up. It may be that the company has done well on other metrics.
Unfortunately Nordstrom's fell 31% over twelve months. So using a snapshot of key business metrics doesn't give us a good picture of why the market is bidding up the stock.
The company's revenue and earnings (over time) are depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).
Nordstrom is a well known stock, with plenty of analyst coverage, suggesting some visibility into future growth. You can see what analysts are predicting for Nordstrom in this interactive graph of future profit estimates.
A Different Perspective
It's nice to see that Nordstrom shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 126% over the last year. There's no doubt those recent returns are much better than the TSR loss of 4% per year over five years. This makes us a little wary, but the business might have turned around its fortunes. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Nordstrom better, we need to consider many other factors. For example, we've discovered 2 warning signs for Nordstrom (1 is concerning!) that you should be aware of before investing here.
We will like Nordstrom better if we see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of growing companies 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 US exchanges.
This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. 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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The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
