“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
— 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 two-decade holding period for an investor who was considering Estee Lauder Cos., Inc. (NYSE: EL) back in 2001, bought the stock, ignored the market’s ups and downs, and simply held through to today.
| Start date: | 10/08/2001 |
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| End date: | 10/06/2021 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $16.82 | ||||
| End price/share: | $313.55 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 594.53 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 743.26 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $15.08 | ||||
| Total return: | 2,230.49% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 17.04% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $232,942.06 | ||||
As we can see, the two-decade investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 17.04%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $232,942.06 today (as of 10/06/2021). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 2,230.49% (something to think about: how might EL shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Estee Lauder Cos., Inc. paid investors a total of $15.08/share in dividends over the 20 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 2.12/share, we calculate that EL has a current yield of approximately 0.68%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 2.12 against the original $16.82/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 4.04%.
One more investment quote to leave you with:
“If investing is entertaining, if you’re having fun, you’re probably not making any money. Good investing is boring.” — George Soros
