If You Had Bought Denison Mines' (TSE:DML) Shares Five Years Ago You Would Be Down 25%

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For many, the main point of investing is to generate higher returns than the overall market. But every investor is virtually certain to have both over-performing and under-performing stocks. At this point some shareholders may be questioning their investment in Denison Mines Corp. (TSE:DML), since the last five years saw the share price fall 25%. And it's not just long term holders hurting, because the stock is down 23% in the last year. It's down 1.9% in the last seven days.

See our latest analysis for Denison Mines

Denison Mines isn't currently profitable, so most analysts would look to revenue growth to get an idea of how fast the underlying business is growing. When a company doesn't make profits, we'd generally expect to see good revenue growth. As you can imagine, fast revenue growth, when maintained, often leads to fast profit growth.

In the last half decade, Denison Mines saw its revenue increase by 0.1% per year. That's far from impressive given all the money it is losing. Given this fairly low revenue growth (and lack of profits), it's not particularly surprising to see the stock down 4.6% (annualized) in the same time frame. The key question is whether the company can make it to profitability, and beyond, without trouble. It could be worth putting it on your watchlist and revisiting when it makes its maiden profit.

You can see how earnings and revenue have changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).

earnings-and-revenue-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. So it makes a lot of sense to check out what analysts think Denison Mines will earn in the future (free profit forecasts).

A Different Perspective

We regret to report that Denison Mines shareholders are down 23% for the year. Unfortunately, that's worse than the broader market decline of 5.0%. 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. Unfortunately, last year's performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 4.6% over the last half decade. We realise that Baron Rothschild has said investors should "buy when there is blood on the streets", but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality business. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Denison Mines better, we need to consider many other factors. Even so, be aware that Denison Mines is showing 3 warning signs in our investment analysis , you should know about...

Denison Mines 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 CA 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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