Photo credit: commons.wikimedia.org

“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 Wynn Resorts Ltd (NASD: WYNN)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2016.

Start date: 03/14/2016
$10,000

03/14/2016
$17,770

03/11/2021
End date: 03/11/2021
Start price/share: $85.22
End price/share: $137.92
Starting shares: 117.34
Ending shares: 128.82
Dividends reinvested/share: $11.00
Total return: 77.67%
Average annual return: 12.20%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $17,770.12

As shown above, the five year investment result worked out quite well, with an annualized rate of return of 12.20%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $17,770.12 today (as of 03/11/2021). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 77.67% (something to think about: how might WYNN shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Wynn Resorts Ltd paid investors a total of $11.00/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 4/share, we calculate that WYNN has a current yield of approximately 0.00%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 4 against the original $85.22/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 0.00%.

Another great investment quote to think about:
“Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” — Warren Buffett