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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 PACCAR Inc. (NASD: PCAR)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2015.

Start date: 03/19/2015
$10,000

03/19/2015
$10,901

03/18/2020
End date: 03/18/2020
Start price/share: $62.59
End price/share: $55.75
Starting shares: 159.77
Ending shares: 195.56
Dividends reinvested/share: $12.84
Total return: 9.02%
Average annual return: 1.74%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $10,901.32

The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 1.74%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $10,901.32 today (as of 03/18/2020). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 9.02% (something to think about: how might PCAR shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that PACCAR Inc. paid investors a total of $12.84/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 1.28/share, we calculate that PCAR has a current yield of approximately 2.30%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 1.28 against the original $62.59/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 3.67%.

Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — George Santayana