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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 Johnson Controls International plc (NYSE: JCI)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2014.

Start date: 11/05/2014
$10,000

11/05/2014
$12,325

11/04/2019
End date: 11/04/2019
Start price/share: $45.16
End price/share: $44.46
Starting shares: 221.43
Ending shares: 277.24
Dividends reinvested/share: $9.24
Total return: 23.26%
Average annual return: 4.27%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $12,325.28

The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 4.27%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $12,325.28 today (as of 11/04/2019). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 23.26% (something to think about: how might JCI shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Johnson Controls International plc paid investors a total of $9.24/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 1.04/share, we calculate that JCI has a current yield of approximately 2.34%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 1.04 against the original $45.16/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 5.18%.

One more investment quote to leave you with:
“We ignore outlooks and forecasts… we’re lousy at it and we admit it … everyone else is lousy too, but most people won’t admit it.” — Martin Whitman