“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”
— Warren Buffett
A critical pearl of wisdom from Warren Buffett teaches us that with any potential stock investment we may make, as soon as our buy order is filled we will have a choice: to remain a co-owner of that company for the long haul, or to react to the inevitable short-term ups and downs that the stock market is famous for (sometimes sharp ups and downs).
The reality of this choice forces us to challenge our confidence in any given company we might invest into, and keep our eyes on the long-term time horizon. The market may go up and down the interim, but over a decade-long holding period, will the investment succeed?
Back in 2009, investors may have been asking themselves that very question about Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd (NYSE: RCL). Let’s examine what would have happened over a decade-long holding period, had you invested in RCL shares back in 2009 and held on.
| Start date: | 09/09/2009 |
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| End date: | 09/06/2019 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $21.07 | ||||
| End price/share: | $108.41 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 474.61 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 552.46 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $11.70 | ||||
| Total return: | 498.92% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 19.61% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $59,904.83 | ||||
As we can see, the decade-long investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 19.61%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $59,904.83 today (as of 09/06/2019). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 498.92% (something to think about: how might RCL shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Many investors out there refuse to own any stock that lacks a dividend; in the case of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd, investors have received $11.70/share in dividends these past 10 years examined in the exercise above. This means total return was driven not just by share price, but also by the dividends received (and what the investor did with those dividends). For this exercise, what we’ve done with the dividends is to assume they are reinvestted — i.e. used to purchase additional shares (the calculations use closing price on ex-date).
Based upon the most recent annualized dividend rate of 2.8/share, we calculate that RCL has a current yield of approximately 2.58%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 2.8 against the original $21.07/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 12.24%.
One more investment quote to leave you with:
“If you’re looking for a home run, a great investment for five years or 10 years or more, then the only way to beat this enormous fog that covers the future is to identify a long-term trend that will give a particular business some sort of edge.” — Ralph Wanger
