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

Start date: 10/22/2014
$10,000

10/22/2014
$22,684

10/21/2019
End date: 10/21/2019
Start price/share: $44.93
End price/share: $96.22
Starting shares: 222.57
Ending shares: 235.77
Dividends reinvested/share: $3.60
Total return: 126.86%
Average annual return: 17.80%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $22,684.36

The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 17.80%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $22,684.36 today (as of 10/21/2019). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 126.86% (something to think about: how might NKE shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Nike paid investors a total of $3.60/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 .88/share, we calculate that NKE has a current yield of approximately 0.91%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of .88 against the original $44.93/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 2.03%.

More investment wisdom to ponder:
“Smart investing doesn’t consist of buying good assets but of buying assets well. This is a very, very important distinction that very, very few people understand.” — Howard Marks

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