“When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.”
— Warren Buffett
One of the most important things investors can learn from Warren Buffett, is about how they approach their time horizon for an investment into a stock under consideration. Because immediately after buying shares of a given stock, investors will then be able to check on the day-to-day (and even minute-by-minute) market value. Some days the stock market will be up, other days down. These daily fluctuations can often distract from the long-term view. Today, we look at the result of a twenty year holding period for an investor who was considering Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. (NYSE: COG) back in 1999, bought the stock, ignored the market’s ups and downs, and simply held through to today.
| Start date: | 03/29/1999 |
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| End date: | 03/28/2019 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $1.29 | ||||
| End price/share: | $26.36 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 7,751.94 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 8,506.50 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $1.09 | ||||
| Total return: | 2,142.31% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 16.82% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $224,336.00 | ||||
The above analysis shows the twenty year investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 16.82%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $224,336.00 today (as of 03/28/2019). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 2,142.31% (something to think about: how might COG shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. paid investors a total of $1.09/share in dividends over the 20 holding period, marking a second component of the total return beyond share price change alone. Much like watering a tree, reinvesting dividends can help an investment to grow over time — for the above calculations we assume dividend reinvestment (and for this exercise the closing price on ex-date is used for the reinvestment of a given dividend).
Based upon the most recent annualized dividend rate of .28/share, we calculate that COG has a current yield of approximately 1.06%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of .28 against the original $1.29/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 82.17%.
One more investment quote to leave you with:
“A stock is not just a ticker symbol or an electronic blip; it is an ownership interest in an actual business, with an underlying value that does not depend on its share price.” — Benjamin Graham
