“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”
— Warren Buffett
The investment philosophy practiced by Warren Buffett calls for investors to take a long-term horizon when making an investment, such as a decade-long holding period (or even longer), and reconsider making the investment in the first place if unable to envision holding the stock for at least five years. Today, we look at how such a long-term strategy would have done for investors in Agilent Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: A) back in 2009, holding through to today.
| Start date: | 04/13/2009 |
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| End date: | 04/10/2019 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $11.93 | ||||
| End price/share: | $81.68 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 838.22 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 900.11 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $3.23 | ||||
| Total return: | 635.21% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 22.09% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $73,546.75 | ||||
As shown above, the decade-long investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 22.09%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $73,546.75 today (as of 04/10/2019). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 635.21% (something to think about: how might A shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Dividends are always an important investment factor to consider, and Agilent Technologies, Inc. has paid $3.23/share in dividends to shareholders over the past 10 years we looked at above. Many an investor will only invest in stocks that pay dividends, so this component of total return is always an important consideration. Automated reinvestment of dividends into additional shares of stock can be a great way for an investor to compound their returns. The above calculations are done with the assuption that dividends received over time are reinvested (the calcuations use the closing price on ex-date).
Based upon the most recent annualized dividend rate of .656/share, we calculate that A has a current yield of approximately 0.80%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of .656 against the original $11.93/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 6.71%.
Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“The four most dangerous words in investing are: ‘this time it’s different.'” — Sir John Templeton
