Kadokawa (TSE:9468) shareholders have earned a 26% CAGR over the last five years

The most you can lose on any stock (assuming you don't use leverage) is 100% of your money. But when you pick a company that is really flourishing, you can make more than 100%. For instance, the price of Kadokawa Corporation (TSE:9468) stock is up an impressive 201% over the last five years. The last week saw the share price soften some 1.4%.

With that in mind, it's worth seeing if the company's underlying fundamentals have been the driver of long term performance, or if there are some discrepancies.

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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. 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.

Kadokawa's earnings per share are down 5.0% per year, despite strong share price performance over five years.

So it's hard to argue that the earnings per share are the best metric to judge the company, as it may not be optimized for profits at this point. Since the change in EPS doesn't seem to correlate with the change in share price, it's worth taking a look at other metrics.

We doubt the modest 0.8% dividend yield is attracting many buyers to the stock. In contrast revenue growth of 7.0% per year is probably viewed as evidence that Kadokawa is growing, a real positive. It's quite possible that management are prioritizing revenue growth over EPS growth at the moment.

You can see below how earnings and revenue have changed over time (discover the exact values by clicking on the image).

Take a more thorough look at Kadokawa's financial health with this free report on its balance sheet.

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 incorporates the value of any spin-offs or discounted capital raisings, along with any dividends, based on the assumption that the dividends are reinvested. Arguably, the TSR gives a more comprehensive picture of the return generated by a stock. We note that for Kadokawa the TSR over the last 5 years was 217%, 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

It's good to see that Kadokawa has rewarded shareholders with a total shareholder return of 37% in the last twelve months. And that does include the dividend. That's better than the annualised return of 26% over half a decade, implying that the company is doing better recently. In the best case scenario, this may hint at some real business momentum, implying that now could be a great time to delve deeper. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Kadokawa better, we need to consider many other factors. To that end, you should be aware of the 1 warning sign we've spotted with Kadokawa .

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