Renewable Energy Group's (NASDAQ:REGI) Wonderful 360% Share Price Increase Shows How Capitalism Can Build Wealth

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. To wit, the Renewable Energy Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:REGI) share price has soared 360% over five years. This just goes to show the value creation that some businesses can achieve. It's also up 41% in about a month. This could be related to the recent financial results that were recently released - you could check the most recent data by reading our company report.

See our latest analysis for Renewable Energy Group

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.

During the last half decade, Renewable Energy Group became profitable. That kind of transition can be an inflection point that justifies a strong share price gain, just as we have seen here.

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

earnings-per-share-growth

We consider it positive that insiders have made significant purchases in the last year. Even so, future earnings will be far more important to whether current shareholders make money. This free interactive report on Renewable Energy Group's earnings, revenue and cash flow is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

A Different Perspective

It's good to see that Renewable Energy Group has rewarded shareholders with a total shareholder return of 244% in the last twelve months. That gain is better than the annual TSR over five years, which is 36%. Therefore it seems like sentiment around the company has been positive lately. Given the share price momentum remains strong, it might be worth taking a closer look at the stock, lest you miss an opportunity. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Renewable Energy Group better, we need to consider many other factors. To that end, you should learn about the 3 warning signs we've spotted with Renewable Energy Group (including 1 which is shouldn't be ignored) .

Renewable Energy Group is not the only stock that insiders are buying. For those who like to find winning investments this free list of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket.

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

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. 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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