The most you can lose on any stock (assuming you don't use leverage) is 100% of your money. On the other hand, if you find a high quality business to buy (at the right price) you can more than double your money! For example, the Neovasc Inc. (TSE:NVCN) share price has soared 171% in the last 1 year. Most would be very happy with that, especially in just one year! It's up an even more impressive 268% over the last quarter. In contrast, the longer term returns are negative, since the share price is 44% lower than it was three years ago.

So let's assess the underlying fundamentals over the last 1 year and see if they've moved in lock-step with shareholder returns.

View our latest analysis for Neovasc

Given that Neovasc 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 expect to see good revenue growth. As you can imagine, fast revenue growth, when maintained, often leads to fast profit growth.

Neovasc grew its revenue by 35% last year. We respect that sort of growth, no doubt. The revenue growth is decent but the share price had an even better year, gaining 171%. Given that the business has made good progress on the top line, it would be worth taking a look at its path to profitability. But investors need to be wary of how the 'fear of missing out' could influence them to buy without doing thorough research.

The image below shows how earnings and revenue have tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).

We consider it positive that insiders have made significant purchases in the last year. Having said that, most people consider earnings and revenue growth trends to be a more meaningful guide to the business. This free report showing analyst forecasts should help you form a view on Neovasc

A Different Perspective

It's nice to see that Neovasc shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 171% over the last year. There's no doubt those recent returns are much better than the TSR loss of 15% per year over five years. This makes us a little wary, but the business might have turned around its fortunes. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Neovasc better, we need to consider many other factors. Take risks, for example - Neovasc has 5 warning signs we think you should be aware of.

Neovasc 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.