Long term investing can be life changing when you buy and hold the truly great businesses. And we've seen some truly amazing gains over the years. Just think about the savvy investors who held CNX Resources Corporation (NYSE:CNX) shares for the last five years, while they gained 344%. This just goes to show the value creation that some businesses can achieve. It's also good to see the share price up 43% over the last quarter. The company reported its financial results recently; you can catch up on the latest numbers by reading our company report.

Since it's been a strong week for CNX Resources shareholders, let's have a look at trend of the longer term fundamentals.

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 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).

During the five years of share price growth, CNX Resources moved from a loss to profitability. Sometimes, the start of profitability is a major inflection point that can signal fast earnings growth to come, which in turn justifies very strong share price gains.

You can see how EPS has changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).

It's probably worth noting we've seen significant insider buying in the last quarter, which we consider a positive. On the other hand, we think the revenue and earnings trends are much more meaningful measures of the business. This free interactive report on CNX Resources' earnings, revenue and cash flow is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

A Different Perspective

It's nice to see that CNX Resources shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 78% over the last year. That gain is better than the annual TSR over five years, which is 35%. Therefore it seems like sentiment around the company has been positive lately. Someone with an optimistic perspective could view the recent improvement in TSR as indicating that the business itself is getting better with time. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand CNX Resources better, we need to consider many other factors. For example, we've discovered 3 warning signs for CNX Resources (1 makes us a bit uncomfortable!) that you should be aware of before investing here.

If you like to buy stocks alongside management, then you might just love this free list of companies. (Hint: most of them are flying under the radar).

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

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. 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.