Photo credit: commons.wikimedia.org

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

— 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 ten year holding period for an investor who was considering Broadcom Inc (NASD: AVGO) back in 2011, bought the stock, ignored the market’s ups and downs, and simply held through to today.

Start date: 02/23/2011
$10,000

02/23/2011
$193,623

02/22/2021
End date: 02/22/2021
Start price/share: $31.34
End price/share: $476.36
Starting shares: 319.08
Ending shares: 406.36
Dividends reinvested/share: $48.04
Total return: 1,835.72%
Average annual return: 34.47%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $193,623.85

The above analysis shows the ten year investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 34.47%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $193,623.85 today (as of 02/22/2021). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 1,835.72% (something to think about: how might AVGO shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Broadcom Inc paid investors a total of $48.04/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 14.4/share, we calculate that AVGO has a current yield of approximately 3.02%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 14.4 against the original $31.34/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 9.64%.

More investment wisdom to ponder:
“Calling someone who trades actively in the market an investor is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a romantic.” — Warren Buffett