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“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 Pioneer Natural Resources Co (NYSE: PXD)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2016.

Start date: 06/10/2016
$10,000

06/10/2016
$10,938

06/09/2021
End date: 06/09/2021
Start price/share: $159.55
End price/share: $167.75
Starting shares: 62.68
Ending shares: 65.22
Dividends reinvested/share: $4.40
Total return: 9.40%
Average annual return: 1.81%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $10,938.36

The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 1.81%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $10,938.36 today (as of 06/09/2021). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 9.40% (something to think about: how might PXD shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Pioneer Natural Resources Co paid investors a total of $4.40/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 2.24/share, we calculate that PXD has a current yield of approximately 1.34%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 2.24 against the original $159.55/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 0.84%.

Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks.” — Benjamin Graham