Investors in Century Casinos (NASDAQ:CNTY) have seen favorable returns of 88% over the past three years

While Century Casinos, Inc. (NASDAQ:CNTY) shareholders are probably generally happy, the stock hasn't had particularly good run recently, with the share price falling 27% in the last quarter. But that shouldn't obscure the pleasing returns achieved by shareholders over the last three years. In fact, the company's share price bested the return of its market index in that time, posting a gain of 88%.

So let's investigate and see if the longer term performance of the company has been in line with the underlying business' progress.

View our latest analysis for Century Casinos

There is no denying that markets are sometimes efficient, but prices do not always reflect 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.

Century Casinos became profitable within the last three years. That would generally be considered a positive, so we'd expect the share price to be up.

The image below shows how EPS has tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).

It is of course excellent to see how Century Casinos has grown profits over the years, but the future is more important for shareholders. This free interactive report on Century Casinos' balance sheet strength is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

A Different Perspective

While the broader market lost about 5.7% in the twelve months, Century Casinos shareholders did even worse, losing 38%. Having said that, it's inevitable that some stocks will be oversold in a falling market. The key is to keep your eyes on the fundamental developments. Regrettably, last year's performance caps off a bad run, with the shareholders facing a total loss of 3% per year over five years. Generally speaking long term share price weakness can be a bad sign, though contrarian investors might want to research the stock in hope of a turnaround. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Century Casinos better, we need to consider many other factors. Take risks, for example - Century Casinos has 3 warning signs (and 1 which is significant) we think you should know about.

We will like Century Casinos better if we see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of growing companies with considerable, recent, insider buying.

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.

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