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“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”

— Warren Buffett

The above quote from Warren Buffett is timeless, and brings into focus the choice about time horizon that any investor should think about before buying a stock they are considering. Behind every stock is an actual business; what will that business look like over a ten year period?

Today, let’s look backwards in time to 2010, and take a look at what happened to investors who asked that very question about Skyworks Solutions Inc (NASD: SWKS), by taking a look at the investment outcome over a ten year holding period.

Start date: 06/02/2010
$10,000

06/02/2010
$78,322

06/01/2020
End date: 06/01/2020
Start price/share: $16.61
End price/share: $119.10
Starting shares: 602.05
Ending shares: 657.43
Dividends reinvested/share: $7.33
Total return: 683.00%
Average annual return: 22.84%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $78,322.69

The above analysis shows the ten year investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 22.84%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $78,322.69 today (as of 06/01/2020). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 683.00% (something to think about: how might SWKS shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Skyworks Solutions Inc paid investors a total of $7.33/share in dividends over the 10 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 1.76/share, we calculate that SWKS has a current yield of approximately 1.48%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 1.76 against the original $16.61/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 8.91%.

Another great investment quote to think about:
“Invest for the long haul. Don’t get too greedy and don’t get too scared.” — Shelby Davis