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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 Best Buy Inc (NYSE: BBY)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2018.

Start date: 05/15/2018
$10,000

05/15/2018
  $10,676

05/12/2023
End date: 05/12/2023
Start price/share: $78.60
End price/share: $71.73
Starting shares: 127.23
Ending shares: 148.84
Dividends reinvested/share: $12.79
Total return: 6.77%
Average annual return: 1.32%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $10,676.89

As shown above, the five year investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 1.32%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $10,676.89 today (as of 05/12/2023). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 6.77% (something to think about: how might BBY shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Best Buy Inc paid investors a total of $12.79/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 3.68/share, we calculate that BBY has a current yield of approximately 5.13%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 3.68 against the original $78.60/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 6.53%.

One more piece of investment wisdom to leave you with:
“Sentimentality about an investments leads to lack of discipline.” — Sam Zell