“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 Seagate Technology plc (NASD: STX)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2015.
| Start date: | 05/27/2015 |
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| End date: | 05/26/2020 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $55.34 | ||||
| End price/share: | $51.20 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 180.70 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 241.81 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $11.92 | ||||
| Total return: | 23.80% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 4.36% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $12,380.01 | ||||
The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 4.36%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $12,380.01 today (as of 05/26/2020). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 23.80% (something to think about: how might STX shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Seagate Technology plc paid investors a total of $11.92/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 2.6/share, we calculate that STX has a current yield of approximately 5.08%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 2.6 against the original $55.34/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 9.18%.
One more investment quote to leave you with:
“If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn’t be in stocks.” — John Bogle
