What other factors can influence the investor's perception on the company's performance which would ultimately affect share price?

Environmental factors

The wider environment such as economic conditions has a direct effect on share price. If the economy is in good condition and is expected to remain, this leads to an increase in investors' confidence. When there is a positive outlook on the health of the economy, companies are expected to perform better and deliver stronger results, which then increases the likelihood of them paying solid dividends. However, if the economy is expected to face a downturn, this increases fear amongst investors. In turn, this fear that the company may fail to cope accordingly causes a reduction in demand and the share price to plummet.

Financial statement reports

Public companies are required to report once each quarter. These statements and figures provide the investment community with an understanding of the overall company performance. Earnings season is the most awaited times of the year where the analysts base the future value of a company and earnings projections; altering to a great extent the sentiment towards a stock within the investment community.

Company's earnings base(earnings per share)

when shareholders buy a stock, they are purchasing a proportional share of a future stream of earnings within a company. Earning per share is generally considered as the single most important variable to value share price. The reason for this is that this metric is used as a barometer to assess a company's profitability per unit of shareholder ownership.

Strength of competition and industry trends

Company stocks tend to be bench-marked and tracked against their peers within the industry they operate. The investor community tends to determine the movements of a stock upon the overall market and sector performance, rather than individually. This is mainly because companies in the same industry are subject to the same pressure and tend to perform similarly.

Market sentiment

This refers to the overall perception that traders have about a stock. Even though this may be a purely psychological indicator, investors are greatly influenced by market waves instead of purely referring to financial indicators. This may be seen as subjective; however, it is usually used in addition to technical analysis on the company to estimate share price movements.

Information about the share price of the company

Companies are obliged to notify any event that influences their share price. These announcements must be made via regulatory announcements on a RIS (Regulatory Information Service) before being published elsewhere. In addition to this, investors gather company information in many other forms: press releases, news stories, court filings and even social media sources such as Tweets. Investors unconsciously react to every piece of information and collate an overall impression of a stock which leads them to buy, hold the shares they have, or even sell.