Lumentum Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:LITE) shareholders will doubtless be very grateful to see the share price up 30% in the last quarter. But that cannot eclipse the less-than-impressive returns over the last three years. Truth be told the share price declined 32% in three years and that return, Dear Reader, falls short of what you could have got from passive investing with an index fund.

With the stock having lost 7.3% in the past week, it's worth taking a look at business performance and seeing if there's any red flags.

Given that Lumentum Holdings didn't make a profit in the last twelve months, we'll focus on revenue growth to form a quick view of its business development. When a company doesn't make profits, we'd generally hope to see good revenue growth. That's because fast revenue growth can be easily extrapolated to forecast profits, often of considerable size.

Over the last three years, Lumentum Holdings' revenue dropped 4.4% per year. That is not a good result. The stock has disappointed holders over the last three years, falling 10%, annualized. And with no profits, and weak revenue, are you surprised? However, in this kind of situation you can sometimes find opportunity, where sentiment is negative but the company is actually making good progress.

The company's revenue and earnings (over time) are depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).

Lumentum Holdings is well known by investors, and plenty of clever analysts have tried to predict the future profit levels. You can see what analysts are predicting for Lumentum Holdings in this interactive graph of future profit estimates.

A Different Perspective

Lumentum Holdings provided a TSR of 3.4% over the last twelve months. Unfortunately this falls short of the market return. On the bright side, that's still a gain, and it is certainly better than the yearly loss of about 1.3% endured over half a decade. It could well be that the business is stabilizing. I find it very interesting to look at share price over the long term as a proxy for business performance. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. For example, we've discovered 1 warning sign for Lumentum Holdings that you should be aware of before investing here.

But note: Lumentum Holdings 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.

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