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“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”

— Warren Buffett

One of the most important things investors can learn from Warren Buffett, is about how they approach their time horizon for an investment into a stock under consideration. Because immediately after buying shares of a given stock, investors will then be able to check on the day-to-day (and even minute-by-minute) market value. Some days the stock market will be up, other days down. These daily fluctuations can often distract from the long-term view. Today, we look at the result of a two-decade holding period for an investor who was considering Yum! Brands Inc (NYSE: YUM) back in 2000, bought the stock, ignored the market’s ups and downs, and simply held through to today.

Start date: 04/07/2000
$10,000

04/07/2000
$165,060

04/06/2020
End date: 04/06/2020
Start price/share: $5.69
End price/share: $70.50
Starting shares: 1,757.47
Ending shares: 2,340.78
Dividends reinvested/share: $13.52
Total return: 1,550.25%
Average annual return: 15.04%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $165,060.93

As shown above, the two-decade investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 15.04%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $165,060.93 today (as of 04/06/2020). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 1,550.25% (something to think about: how might YUM shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Yum! Brands Inc paid investors a total of $13.52/share in dividends over the 20 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 1.88/share, we calculate that YUM has a current yield of approximately 2.67%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 1.88 against the original $5.69/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 46.92%.

Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“Cash is a fact, profit is an opinion.” — Alfred Rappaport