Long term investing can be life changing when you buy and hold the truly great businesses. And highest quality companies can see their share prices grow by huge amounts. To wit, the Intra-Cellular Therapies, Inc. (NASDAQ:ITCI) share price has soared 447% over five years. This just goes to show the value creation that some businesses can achieve. In the last week the share price is up 1.7%.

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

Intra-Cellular Therapies isn't currently profitable, so most analysts would look to revenue growth to get an idea of how fast the underlying business is growing. Generally speaking, companies without profits are expected to grow revenue every year, and at a good clip. As you can imagine, fast revenue growth, when maintained, often leads to fast profit growth.

For the last half decade, Intra-Cellular Therapies can boast revenue growth at a rate of 70% per year. That's well above most pre-profit companies. Arguably, this is well and truly reflected in the strong share price gain of 40%(per year) over the same period. It's never too late to start following a top notch stock like Intra-Cellular Therapies, since some long term winners go on winning for decades. On the face of it, this looks lke a good opportunity, although we note sentiment seems very positive already.

You can see below how earnings and revenue have changed over time (discover the exact values by clicking on the image).

Intra-Cellular Therapies is a well known stock, with plenty of analyst coverage, suggesting some visibility into future growth. Given we have quite a good number of analyst forecasts, it might be well worth checking out this free chart depicting consensus estimates.

A Different Perspective

Intra-Cellular Therapies shareholders gained a total return of 3.9% during the year. But that was short of the market average. It's probably a good sign that the company has an even better long term track record, having provided shareholders with an annual TSR of 40% over five years. Maybe the share price is just taking a breather while the business executes on its growth strategy. 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 instance, we've identified 1 warning sign for Intra-Cellular Therapies that you should be aware of.

We will like Intra-Cellular Therapies better if we see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of undervalued stocks (mostly small caps) 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.