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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 Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2018.

Start date: 05/09/2018
$10,000

05/09/2018
  $9,826

05/08/2023
End date: 05/08/2023
Start price/share: $117.50
End price/share: $93.96
Starting shares: 85.11
Ending shares: 104.56
Dividends reinvested/share: $18.00
Total return: -1.76%
Average annual return: -0.35%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $9,826.22

The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out poorly, with an annualized rate of return of -0.35%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $9,826.22 today (as of 05/08/2023). On a total return basis, that’s a result of -1.76% (something to think about: how might PSX shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Phillips 66 paid investors a total of $18.00/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 4.2/share, we calculate that PSX has a current yield of approximately 4.47%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 4.2 against the original $117.50/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 3.80%.

One more investment quote to leave you with:
“Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up.” — Charlie Munger