It might seem bad, but the worst that can happen when you buy a stock (without leverage) is that its share price goes to zero. But when you pick a company that is really flourishing, you can make more than 100%. To wit, the Glaukos Corporation (NYSE:GKOS) share price has flown 225% in the last three years. How nice for those who held the stock! It's also up 9.5% in about a month. But this could be related to good market conditions -- stocks in its market are up 4.3% in the last month.

Since the stock has added US$328m to its market cap in the past week alone, let's see if underlying performance has been driving long-term returns.

Glaukos wasn't profitable in the last twelve months, it is unlikely we'll see a strong correlation between its share price and its earnings per share (EPS). Arguably revenue is our next best option. Generally speaking, companies without profits are expected to grow revenue every year, and at a good clip. That's because fast revenue growth can be easily extrapolated to forecast profits, often of considerable size.

Glaukos' revenue trended up 6.5% each year over three years. Considering the company is losing money, we think that rate of revenue growth is uninspiring. In comparison, the share price rise of 48% per year over the last three years is pretty impressive. Shareholders should be pretty happy with that, although interested investors might want to examine the financial data more closely to see if the gains are really justified. It seems likely that the market is pretty optimistic about Glaukos, given it is losing money.

The image below shows how earnings and revenue have tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).

Glaukos is a well known stock, with plenty of analyst coverage, suggesting some visibility into future growth. So it makes a lot of sense to check out what analysts think Glaukos will earn in the future (free analyst consensus estimates)

A Different Perspective

It's nice to see that Glaukos shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 140% over the last year. Since the one-year TSR is better than the five-year TSR (the latter coming in at 18% per year), it would seem that the stock's performance has improved in recent times. In the best case scenario, this may hint at some real business momentum, implying that now could be a great time to delve deeper. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Glaukos better, we need to consider many other factors. Even so, be aware that Glaukos is showing 2 warning signs in our investment analysis , you should know about...

But note: Glaukos may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies with past earnings growth (and further growth forecast).

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.