Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE:CL) Shareholders Have Enjoyed A 15% Share Price Gain

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These days it's easy to simply buy an index fund, and your returns should (roughly) match the market. But you can significantly boost your returns by picking above-average stocks. For example, the Colgate-Palmolive Company (NYSE:CL) share price is up 15% in the last year, clearly besting than the market return of around 1.4% (not including dividends). So that should have shareholders smiling. In contrast, the longer term returns are negative, since the share price is 0.6% lower than it was three years ago.

View our latest analysis for Colgate-Palmolive

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.

Colgate-Palmolive was able to grow EPS by 13% in the last twelve months. We note that the earnings per share growth isn't far from the share price growth (of 15%). That suggests that the market sentiment around the company hasn't changed much over that time. It makes intuitive sense that the share price and EPS would grow at similar rates.

The graphic below depicts how EPS has changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).

It's probably worth noting that the CEO is paid less than the median at similar sized companies. It's always worth keeping an eye on CEO pay, but a more important question is whether the company will grow earnings throughout the years. Dive deeper into the earnings by checking this interactive graph of Colgate-Palmolive's earnings, revenue and cash flow.

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. Arguably, the TSR gives a more comprehensive picture of the return generated by a stock. We note that for Colgate-Palmolive the TSR over the last year was 18%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!

A Different Perspective

It's nice to see that Colgate-Palmolive shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 18% over the last year. And that does include the dividend. Since the one-year TSR is better than the five-year TSR (the latter coming in at 3.8% 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. If you would like to research Colgate-Palmolive in more detail then you might want to take a look at whether insiders have been buying or selling shares in the company.

If you would prefer to check out another company -- one with potentially superior financials -- then do not miss this free list of companies that have proven they can grow earnings.

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