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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 Clorox Co (NYSE: CLX)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2017.

Start date: 07/24/2017
$10,000

07/24/2017
$12,723

07/21/2022
End date: 07/21/2022
Start price/share: $131.32
End price/share: $147.95
Starting shares: 76.15
Ending shares: 85.98
Dividends reinvested/share: $19.80
Total return: 27.20%
Average annual return: 4.94%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $12,723.03

As shown above, the five year investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 4.94%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $12,723.03 today (as of 07/21/2022). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 27.20% (something to think about: how might CLX shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Clorox Co paid investors a total of $19.80/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 4.72/share, we calculate that CLX has a current yield of approximately 3.19%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 4.72 against the original $131.32/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 2.43%.

Another great investment quote to think about:
“Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble.” — Warren Buffett