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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 TechnipFMC plc (NYSE: FTI)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2015.

Start date: 01/16/2015
$10,000

01/16/2015
$5,268

01/15/2020
End date: 01/15/2020
Start price/share: $40.12
End price/share: $20.18
Starting shares: 249.25
Ending shares: 261.05
Dividends reinvested/share: $1.17
Total return: -47.32%
Average annual return: -12.03%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $5,268.33

As shown above, the five year investment result worked out poorly, with an annualized rate of return of -12.03%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $5,268.33 today (as of 01/15/2020). On a total return basis, that’s a result of -47.32% (something to think about: how might FTI shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that TechnipFMC plc paid investors a total of $1.17/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 .52/share, we calculate that FTI 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 .52 against the original $40.12/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 6.43%.

Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“If you’re prepared to invest in a company, then you ought to be able to explain why in simple language that a fifth grader could understand, and quickly enough so the fifth grader won’t get bored.” — Peter Lynch