Some stocks are best avoided. We don’t wish catastrophic capital loss on anyone. Imagine if you held Trinity Biotech plc (NASDAQ:TRIB) for half a decade as the share price tanked 95%. And some of the more recent buyers are probably worried, too, with the stock falling 63% in the last year. And the share price decline continued over the last week, dropping some 14%.
We really hope anyone holding through that price crash has a diversified portfolio. Even when you lose money, you don’t have to lose the lesson.
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 way to examine how market sentiment has changed over time is to look at the interaction between a company’s share price and its earnings per share (EPS).
We know that Trinity Biotech has been profitable in the past. However, it made a loss in the last twelve months, suggesting profit may be an unreliable metric at this stage. Other metrics might give us a better handle on how its value is changing over time.
The revenue decline of 1.9% isn’t too bad. But if the market expected durable top line growth, then that could explain the share price weakness.
The graphic below depicts how earnings and revenue have changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).
You can see how its balance sheet has strengthened (or weakened) over time in this free interactive graphic.
A Different Perspective
Trinity Biotech shareholders are down 63% for the year, 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. Regrettably, last year’s performance caps off a bad run, with the shareholders facing a total loss of 44% 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. Like risks, for instance. Every company has them, and we’ve spotted 4 warning signs for Trinity Biotech (of which 1 is a bit concerning!) you should know about.