“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 Merck & Co Inc (NYSE: MRK)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2017.
| Start date: | 06/16/2017 |
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| End date: | 06/15/2022 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $60.09 | ||||
| End price/share: | $84.63 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 166.42 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 194.62 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $11.32 | ||||
| Total return: | 64.71% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 10.50% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $16,474.47 | ||||
As we can see, the five year investment result worked out quite well, with an annualized rate of return of 10.50%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $16,474.47 today (as of 06/15/2022). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 64.71% (something to think about: how might MRK shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Many investors out there refuse to own any stock that lacks a dividend; in the case of Merck & Co Inc, investors have received $11.32/share in dividends these past 5 years examined in the exercise above. This means total return was driven not just by share price, but also by the dividends received (and what the investor did with those dividends). For this exercise, what we’ve done with the dividends is to assume they are reinvestted — i.e. used to purchase additional shares (the calculations use closing price on ex-date).
Based upon the most recent annualized dividend rate of 2.76/share, we calculate that MRK has a current yield of approximately 3.26%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 2.76 against the original $60.09/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 5.43%.
Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“You don’t need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ.” — Warren Buffett
