nLIGHT, Inc. (NASDAQ:LASR) shareholders might be concerned after seeing the share price drop 11% in the last quarter. But looking back over the last year, the returns have actually been rather pleasing! In that time we've seen the stock easily surpass the market return, with a gain of 33%.
Check out our latest analysis for nLIGHT
Because nLIGHT made a loss in the last twelve months, we think the market is probably more focussed on revenue and revenue growth, at least for now. When a company doesn't make profits, we'd generally expect to see good revenue growth. That's because fast revenue growth can be easily extrapolated to forecast profits, often of considerable size.
nLIGHT actually shrunk its revenue over the last year, with a reduction of 2.6%. Despite the lack of revenue growth, the stock has returned a solid 33% the last twelve months. To us that means that there isn't a lot of correlation between the past revenue performance and the share price, but a closer look at analyst forecasts and the bottom line may well explain a lot.
The company's revenue and earnings (over time) are depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).
nLIGHT 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 nLIGHT in this interactive graph of future profit estimates.
A Different Perspective
It's nice to see that nLIGHT shareholders have gained 33% over the last year. Unfortunately the share price is down 11% over the last quarter. It may simply be that the share price got ahead of itself, although there may have been fundamental developments that are weighing on it. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand nLIGHT better, we need to consider many other factors. Even so, be aware that nLIGHT is showing 2 warning signs in our investment analysis , you should know about...
But note: nLIGHT 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 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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