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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 Tapestry Inc (NYSE: TPR)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2014.

Start date: 09/15/2014
$10,000

09/15/2014
$8,309

09/12/2019
End date: 09/12/2019
Start price/share: $36.93
End price/share: $25.58
Starting shares: 270.78
Ending shares: 324.76
Dividends reinvested/share: $6.76
Total return: -16.93%
Average annual return: -3.64%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $8,309.45

The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out poorly, with an annualized rate of return of -3.64%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $8,309.45 today (as of 09/12/2019). On a total return basis, that’s a result of -16.93% (something to think about: how might TPR shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Tapestry Inc paid investors a total of $6.76/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 1.35/share, we calculate that TPR has a current yield of approximately 5.28%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 1.35 against the original $36.93/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 14.30%.

One more investment quote to leave you with:
“The four most dangerous words in investing are: ‘this time it’s different.'” — Sir John Templeton