It's fun to play "what if" games, and you can play them with stocks, too. For example, what if you'd plunked $10,000 into shares of Monster Beverage (MNST 0.83%) stock five years ago, as the COVID-19 pandemic heated up? How would you have done?

The answer isn't as pretty as it appears: Your $10,000 stake would have grown to be worth about $20,922 -- amounting to an average annual growth rate of 15.9%. That sure looks good, and it's well above the stock market's long-term average annual gain of close to 10%.

Image source: Getty Images.

Here's the problem, though: During the past five years, the stock market, as measured by the benchmark S&P 500 index, averaged way more than 10% annual gains -- it averaged 20% annual gains, in fact, enough to turn a $10,000 investment into a stake worth close to $25,000. So Monster Beverage has underperformed the stock market over the past five years.

Is Monster Beverage a bad stock?

Past returns are in the past, of course, and investors need to look forward when evaluating potential investments. Will Monster Beverage do well going forward? It's quite possible. It's known for energy drinks, juice energy drinks, and fitness energy drinks, and it's recently moved into alcohol drinks, as well. Its non-alcohol segments have been growing well, per its latest report, with alcohol brands underperforming.

Potential investors should know that one of its two co-founders and co-CEOs is stepping down, which can turn out to be a good or bad thing for the company. Monster Beverage does face deep-pocketed competition from the likes of PepsiCo, for example. However, the company has shown that it can innovate and offer new items appealing to evolving tastes.

Its fourth-quarter report featured record revenue of $1.81 billion, up 4.7% year over year, and operating income up 7.9%. Take a closer look if you're interested.