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“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”

— Warren Buffett

The Warren Buffett investment philosophy calls for a long-term investment horizon, where a ten year holding period, or even longer, would fit right into the strategy. How would such a strategy have worked out for an investment into Kellogg Co (NYSE: K)? Today, we examine the outcome of a ten year investment into the stock back in 2013.

Start date: 06/13/2013
$10,000

06/13/2013
  $14,107

06/12/2023
End date: 06/12/2023
Start price/share: $64.23
End price/share: $65.40
Starting shares: 155.69
Ending shares: 215.71
Dividends reinvested/share: $21.53
Total return: 41.08%
Average annual return: 3.50%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $14,107.32

The above analysis shows the ten year investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 3.50%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $14,107.32 today (as of 06/12/2023). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 41.08% (something to think about: how might K shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Kellogg Co paid investors a total of $21.53/share in dividends over the 10 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 2.36/share, we calculate that K has a current yield of approximately 3.61%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 2.36 against the original $64.23/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 5.62%.

Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“The stock market is filled with individuals who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.” — Phillip Fisher