The excitement of investing in a company that can reverse its fortunes is a big draw for some speculators, so even companies that have no revenue, no profit, and a record of falling short, can manage to find investors. But as Peter Lynch said in One Up On Wall Street, 'Long shots almost never pay off.' While a well funded company may sustain losses for years, it will need to generate a profit eventually, or else investors will move on and the company will wither away.

If this kind of company isn't your style, you like companies that generate revenue, and even earn profits, then you may well be interested in W. R. Berkley (NYSE:WRB). While profit isn't the sole metric that should be considered when investing, it's worth recognising businesses that can consistently produce it.

Check out our latest analysis for W. R. Berkley

If a company can keep growing earnings per share (EPS) long enough, its share price should eventually follow. Therefore, there are plenty of investors who like to buy shares in companies that are growing EPS. It certainly is nice to see that W. R. Berkley has managed to grow EPS by 18% per year over three years. As a general rule, we'd say that if a company can keep up that sort of growth, shareholders will be beaming.

Careful consideration of revenue growth and earnings before interest and taxation (EBIT) margins can help inform a view on the sustainability of the recent profit growth. W. R. Berkley maintained stable EBIT margins over the last year, all while growing revenue 11% to US$13b. That's encouraging news for the company!

You can take a look at the company's revenue and earnings growth trend, in the chart below. Click on the chart to see the exact numbers.

Fortunately, we've got access to analyst forecasts of W. R. Berkley's future profits. You can do your own forecasts without looking, or you can take a peek at what the professionals are predicting.

Since W. R. Berkley has a market capitalisation of US$22b, we wouldn't expect insiders to hold a large percentage of shares. But we do take comfort from the fact that they are investors in the company. Indeed, they have a considerable amount of wealth invested in it, currently valued at US$4.8b. Coming in at 22% of the business, that holding gives insiders a lot of influence, and plenty of reason to generate value for shareholders. So there is opportunity here to invest in a company whose management have tangible incentives to deliver.