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“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”

— 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 Kimco Realty Corp (NYSE: KIM)? Today, we examine the outcome of a twenty year investment into the stock back in 2003.

Start date: 05/27/2003
$10,000

05/27/2003
  $24,120

05/23/2023
End date: 05/23/2023
Start price/share: $19.47
End price/share: $18.42
Starting shares: 513.61
Ending shares: 1,308.75
Dividends reinvested/share: $20.13
Total return: 141.07%
Average annual return: 4.50%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $24,120.05

The above analysis shows the twenty year investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 4.50%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $24,120.05 today (as of 05/23/2023). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 141.07% (something to think about: how might KIM shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Kimco Realty Corp paid investors a total of $20.13/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 .92/share, we calculate that KIM has a current yield of approximately 4.99%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of .92 against the original $19.47/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 25.63%.

Another great investment quote to think about:
“If investing is entertaining, if you’re having fun, you’re probably not making any money. Good investing is boring.” — George Soros