If you buy and hold a stock for many years, you'd hope to be making a profit. Furthermore, you'd generally like to see the share price rise faster than the market. Unfortunately for shareholders, while the Amerant Bancorp Inc. (NYSE:AMTB) share price is up 73% in the last five years, that's less than the market return. Unfortunately the share price is down 11% in the last year.

The past week has proven to be lucrative for Amerant Bancorp investors, so let's see if fundamentals drove the company's five-year performance.

Check out our latest analysis for Amerant Bancorp

While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just underlying business performance. 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.

Over half a decade, Amerant Bancorp managed to grow its earnings per share at 18% a year. The EPS growth is more impressive than the yearly share price gain of 12% over the same period. Therefore, it seems the market has become relatively pessimistic about the company. The reasonably low P/E ratio of 11.28 also suggests market apprehension.

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

It is of course excellent to see how Amerant Bancorp has grown profits over the years, but the future is more important for shareholders. It might be well worthwhile taking a look at our free report on how its financial position has changed over time.

What About Dividends?

It is important to consider the total shareholder return, as well as the share price return, for any given stock. The TSR is a return calculation that accounts for the value of cash dividends (assuming that any dividend received was reinvested) and the calculated value of any discounted capital raisings and spin-offs. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. In the case of Amerant Bancorp, it has a TSR of 78% for the last 5 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.

A Different Perspective

Amerant Bancorp shareholders are down 9.4% for the year (even including dividends), but the market itself is up 21%. However, keep in mind that even the best stocks will sometimes underperform the market over a twelve month period. Longer term investors wouldn't be so upset, since they would have made 12%, each year, over five years. It could be that the recent sell-off is an opportunity, so it may be worth checking the fundamental data for signs of a long term growth trend. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Amerant Bancorp better, we need to consider many other factors. For instance, we've identified 1 warning sign for Amerant Bancorp that you should be aware of.

But note: Amerant Bancorp 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.