“I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five 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 five year holding period for an investor who was considering PerkinElmer, Inc. (NYSE: PKI) back in 2016, bought the stock, ignored the market’s ups and downs, and simply held through to today.
| Start date: | 03/28/2016 |
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| End date: | 03/25/2021 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $48.30 | ||||
| End price/share: | $125.85 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 207.04 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 210.88 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $1.40 | ||||
| Total return: | 165.39% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 21.58% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $26,536.63 | ||||
The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 21.58%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $26,536.63 today (as of 03/25/2021). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 165.39% (something to think about: how might PKI shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that PerkinElmer, Inc. paid investors a total of $1.40/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 .28/share, we calculate that PKI has a current yield of approximately 0.22%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of .28 against the original $48.30/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 0.46%.
Another great investment quote to think about:
“Sentimentality about an investments leads to lack of discipline.” — Sam Zell
