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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 MGM Resorts International (NYSE: MGM)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2014.

Start date: 07/16/2014
$10,000

07/16/2014
$11,968

07/15/2019
End date: 07/15/2019
Start price/share: $25.56
End price/share: $29.38
Starting shares: 391.24
Ending shares: 407.33
Dividends reinvested/share: $1.18
Total return: 19.67%
Average annual return: 3.66%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $11,968.95

As shown above, the five year investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 3.66%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $11,968.95 today (as of 07/15/2019). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 19.67% (something to think about: how might MGM shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that MGM Resorts International paid investors a total of $1.18/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 .52/share, we calculate that MGM has a current yield of approximately 1.77%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of .52 against the original $25.56/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 6.92%.

One more investment quote to leave you with:
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” — Benjamin Franklin