Every investor on earth makes bad calls sometimes. But you want to avoid the really big losses like the plague. So spare a thought for the long term shareholders of Yiren Digital Ltd. (NYSE:YRD); the share price is down a whopping 85% in the last three years. That’d be enough to cause even the strongest minds some disquiet. Furthermore, it’s down 27% in about a quarter. That’s not much fun for holders.
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.
Because Yiren Digital made a loss in the last twelve months, we think the market is probably more focussed on revenue and revenue growth, at least for now. Generally speaking, companies without profits are expected to grow revenue every year, and at a good clip. As you can imagine, fast revenue growth, when maintained, often leads to fast profit growth.
In the last three years Yiren Digital saw its revenue shrink by 22% per year. That means its revenue trend is very weak compared to other loss making companies. The swift share price decline at an annual compound rate of 23%, reflects this weak fundamental performance. We prefer leave it to clowns to try to catch falling knives, like this stock. It’s worth remembering that investors call buying a steeply falling share price ‘catching a falling knife’ because it is a dangerous pass time.
The company’s revenue and earnings (over time) are depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).
A Different Perspective
Yiren Digital shareholders are down 0.8% for the year, but the market itself is up 45%. 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, longer term shareholders are suffering worse, given the loss of 12% doled out over the last five years. We would want clear information suggesting the company will grow, before taking the view that the share price will stabilize. It’s always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Yiren Digital better, we need to consider many other factors.