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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 MGM Resorts International (NYSE: MGM)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2018.

Start date: 03/19/2018
$10,000

03/19/2018
  $12,041

03/16/2023
End date: 03/16/2023
Start price/share: $36.28
End price/share: $41.95
Starting shares: 275.63
Ending shares: 287.09
Dividends reinvested/share: $1.06
Total return: 20.43%
Average annual return: 3.79%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $12,041.73

As shown above, the five year investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 3.79%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $12,041.73 today (as of 03/16/2023). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 20.43% (something to think about: how might MGM shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that MGM Resorts International paid investors a total of $1.06/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 .01/share, we calculate that MGM has a current yield of approximately 0.02%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of .01 against the original $36.28/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 0.06%.

Another great investment quote to think about:
“The right time for a company to finance its growth is not when it needs capital, but rather when the market is most receptive to providing capital.” — Michael Milken