Photo credit: commons.wikimedia.org

“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 two-decade holding period for an investor who was considering Union Pacific Corp (NYSE: UNP) back in 1999, bought the stock, ignored the market’s ups and downs, and simply held through to today.

Start date: 09/27/1999
$10,000

09/27/1999
$195,181

09/25/2019
End date: 09/25/2019
Start price/share: $12.17
End price/share: $163.60
Starting shares: 821.69
Ending shares: 1,193.84
Dividends reinvested/share: $22.19
Total return: 1,853.11%
Average annual return: 16.01%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $195,181.49

As shown above, the two-decade investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 16.01%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $195,181.49 today (as of 09/25/2019). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 1,853.11% (something to think about: how might UNP shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Union Pacific Corp paid investors a total of $22.19/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 3.88/share, we calculate that UNP has a current yield of approximately 2.37%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 3.88 against the original $12.17/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 19.47%.

One more investment quote to leave you with:
“Don’t wait for the perfect time, you will wait forever. Always take advantage of the time you’re given and make it perfect.” — Daymond John