“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 National Oilwell Varco Inc (NYSE: NOV)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2015.
| Start date: | 01/13/2015 |
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| End date: | 01/10/2020 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $57.97 | ||||
| End price/share: | $23.84 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 172.50 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 187.08 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $3.05 | ||||
| Total return: | -55.40% | ||||
| Average annual return: | -14.93% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $4,459.30 | ||||
As shown above, the five year investment result worked out poorly, with an annualized rate of return of -14.93%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $4,459.30 today (as of 01/10/2020). On a total return basis, that’s a result of -55.40% (something to think about: how might NOV shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that National Oilwell Varco Inc paid investors a total of $3.05/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 .2/share, we calculate that NOV has a current yield of approximately 0.84%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of .2 against the original $57.97/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 1.45%.
Another great investment quote to think about:
“The most important three words in investing is: “I don’t know.†If someone doesn’t say that to you then they are lying.” — James Altucher
