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How Much Did HollyFrontier's(NYSE:HFC) Shareholders Earn From Share Price Movements Over The Last Year?

Taking the occasional loss comes part and parcel with investing on the stock market. Unfortunately, shareholders of HollyFrontier Corporation (NYSE:HFC) have suffered share price declines over the last year. To wit the share price is down 60% in that time. Notably, shareholders had a tough run over the longer term, too, with a drop of 43% in the last three years. Shareholders have had an even rougher run lately, with the share price down 21% in the last 90 days.

Check out our latest analysis for HollyFrontier

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 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.

HollyFrontier fell to a loss making position during the year. Some investors no doubt dumped the stock as a result. However, there may be an opportunity for investors if the company can recover.

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

earnings-per-share-growth
earnings-per-share-growth

We consider it positive that insiders have made significant purchases in the last year. Even so, future earnings will be far more important to whether current shareholders make money. This free interactive report on HollyFrontier's earnings, revenue and cash flow is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

A Different Perspective

HollyFrontier shareholders are down 59% for the year (even including dividends), but the market itself is up 23%. 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 8% 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 HollyFrontier better, we need to consider many other factors. To that end, you should learn about the 3 warning signs we've spotted with HollyFrontier (including 1 which is shouldn't be ignored) .

HollyFrontier is not the only stock that insiders are buying. For those who like to find winning investments this free list of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket.

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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