Explore James Hardie Industries's Fair Values from the Community and select yours

If you buy and hold a stock for many years, you'd hope to be making a profit. Furthermore, you'd generally like to see the share price rise faster than the market. But James Hardie Industries plc (ASX:JHX) has fallen short of that second goal, with a share price rise of 41% over five years, which is below the market return. Unfortunately the share price is down 14% in the last year.

The past week has proven to be lucrative for James Hardie Industries investors, so let's see if fundamentals drove the company's five-year performance.

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To quote Buffett, 'Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace...' One flawed but reasonable way to assess how sentiment around a company has changed is to compare the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price.

Over half a decade, James Hardie Industries managed to grow its earnings per share at 6.1% a year. This EPS growth is reasonably close to the 7% average annual increase in the share price. That suggests that the market sentiment around the company hasn't changed much over that time. In fact, the share price seems to largely reflect the EPS growth.

The image below shows how EPS has tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).ASX:JHX Earnings Per Share Growth August 11th 2025

Before buying or selling a stock, we always recommend a close examination of historic growth trends, available here.

A Dividend Lost

It's important to keep in mind that we've been talking about the share price returns, which don't include dividends, while the total shareholder return does. In some ways, TSR is a better measure of how well an investment has performed. Over the last 5 years, James Hardie Industries generated a TSR of 47%, which is, of course, better than the share price return. Even though the company isn't paying dividends at the moment, it has done in the past.

A Different Perspective

While the broader market gained around 18% in the last year, James Hardie Industries shareholders lost 14%. Even the share prices of good stocks drop sometimes, but we want to see improvements in the fundamental metrics of a business, before getting too interested. Longer term investors wouldn't be so upset, since they would have made 8%, each year, over five years. If the fundamental data continues to indicate long term sustainable growth, the current sell-off could be an opportunity worth considering. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand James Hardie Industries better, we need to consider many other factors. Consider for instance, the ever-present spectre of investment risk.  We've identified 1 warning sign  with James Hardie Industries , and understanding them should be part of your investment process.

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Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on Australian 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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