If you are building a properly diversified stock portfolio, the chances are some of your picks will perform badly. But the long term shareholders of Schweiter Technologies AG (VTX:SWTQ) have had an unfortunate run in the last three years. Unfortunately, they have held through a 69% decline in the share price in that time. The more recent news is of little comfort, with the share price down 26% in a year.

Now let's have a look at the company's fundamentals, and see if the long term shareholder return has matched the performance of the underlying business.

Check out our latest analysis for Schweiter Technologies

To quote Buffett, 'Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace...' 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.

Schweiter Technologies saw its EPS decline at a compound rate of 36% per year, over the last three years. This change in EPS is reasonably close to the 32% average annual decrease in the share price. So it seems like sentiment towards the stock hasn't changed all that much over time. Rather, the share price has approximately tracked EPS growth.

You can see below how EPS has changed over time (discover the exact values by clicking on the image).

Before buying or selling a stock, we always recommend a close examination of historic growth trends, available here.

What About Dividends?

As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). 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. It's fair to say that the TSR gives a more complete picture for stocks that pay a dividend. In the case of Schweiter Technologies, it has a TSR of -66% for the last 3 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!

A Different Perspective

While the broader market gained around 8.3% in the last year, Schweiter Technologies shareholders lost 24% (even including dividends). However, keep in mind that even the best stocks will sometimes underperform the market over a twelve month period. Regrettably, last year's performance caps off a bad run, with the shareholders facing a total loss of 7% per year over five years. Generally speaking long term share price weakness can be a bad sign, though contrarian investors might want to research the stock in hope of a turnaround. While it is well worth considering the different impacts that market conditions can have on the share price, there are other factors that are even more important. Case in point: We've spotted 1 warning sign for Schweiter Technologies you should be aware of.