“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 Delta Air Lines Inc (NYSE: DAL)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2018.
| Start date: | 08/17/2018 |
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| End date: | 08/16/2023 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $55.65 | ||||
| End price/share: | $42.67 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 179.69 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 187.45 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $2.36 | ||||
| Total return: | -20.01% | ||||
| Average annual return: | -4.37% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $7,997.80 | ||||
The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out poorly, with an annualized rate of return of -4.37%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $7,997.80 today (as of 08/16/2023). On a total return basis, that’s a result of -20.01% (something to think about: how might DAL shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Delta Air Lines Inc paid investors a total of $2.36/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/share, we calculate that DAL has a current yield of approximately 0.94%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of .4 against the original $55.65/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 1.69%.
One more piece of investment wisdom to leave you with:
“Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.” — Woody Allen
