“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 twenty year holding period for an investor who was considering Conagra Brands Inc (NYSE: CAG) back in 1999, bought the stock, ignored the market’s ups and downs, and simply held through to today.
| Start date: | 10/15/1999 |
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| End date: | 10/14/2019 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $17.27 | ||||
| End price/share: | $27.78 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 579.04 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 1,147.99 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $14.64 | ||||
| Total return: | 218.91% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 5.97% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $31,910.58 | ||||
As we can see, the twenty year investment result worked out well, with an annualized rate of return of 5.97%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $31,910.58 today (as of 10/14/2019). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 218.91% (something to think about: how might CAG shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Conagra Brands Inc paid investors a total of $14.64/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 .85/share, we calculate that CAG has a current yield of approximately 3.06%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of .85 against the original $17.27/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 17.72%.
One more investment quote to leave you with:
“Calling someone who trades actively in the market an investor is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a romantic.” — Warren Buffett
