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“I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.”

— Warren Buffett

The Warren Buffett investment philosophy calls for a long-term investment horizon, where a five year holding period, or even longer, would fit right into the strategy. How would such a strategy have worked out for an investment into HanesBrands Inc (NYSE: HBI)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2014.

Start date: 06/25/2014
$10,000

06/25/2014
$7,745

06/24/2019
End date: 06/24/2019
Start price/share: $24.18
End price/share: $16.70
Starting shares: 413.56
Ending shares: 463.89
Dividends reinvested/share: $2.49
Total return: -22.53%
Average annual return: -4.98%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $7,745.96

As shown above, the five year investment result worked out poorly, with an annualized rate of return of -4.98%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $7,745.96 today (as of 06/24/2019). On a total return basis, that’s a result of -22.53% (something to think about: how might HBI shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that HanesBrands Inc paid investors a total of $2.49/share in dividends over the 5 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 .6/share, we calculate that HBI has a current yield of approximately 3.59%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of .6 against the original $24.18/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 14.85%.

Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“Though tempting, trying to time the market is a loser’s game.” — Christopher Davis