“When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.”
— Warren Buffett
The Warren Buffett investment philosophy calls for a long-term investment horizon, where a twenty year holding period, or even longer, would fit right into the strategy. How would such a strategy have worked out for an investment into Xcel Energy Inc (NASD: XEL)? Today, we examine the outcome of a twenty year investment into the stock back in 2001.
| Start date: | 10/08/2001 |
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| End date: | 10/06/2021 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $29.36 | ||||
| End price/share: | $64.33 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 340.60 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 775.58 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $23.36 | ||||
| Total return: | 398.93% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 8.36% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $49,850.16 | ||||
The above analysis shows the twenty year investment result worked out well, with an annualized rate of return of 8.36%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $49,850.16 today (as of 10/06/2021). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 398.93% (something to think about: how might XEL shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Xcel Energy Inc paid investors a total of $23.36/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 1.83/share, we calculate that XEL has a current yield of approximately 2.84%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 1.83 against the original $29.36/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 9.67%.
Another great investment quote to think about:
“You can get in much more trouble with a good idea than a bad idea, because you forget that the good idea has limits.” — Benjamin Graham
