“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
— Warren Buffett
Such a great quote from Warren Buffett, highlighting the importance of investment time horizon when considering making an investment. In the short run, who knows what the stock market will do? A week or two after buying any given stock, could the entire stock market fall out of bed? Quite possibly! Should that happen, how would you react? It is an excellent question to think about before hitting the buy button.
For investors who take a multi-year time horizon, the important thing is not what happens in the next week or two, but what the result will be over the long haul. Today, we look at the result investors of the year 2003 experienced, who considered an investment in shares of UnitedHealth Group Inc (NYSE: UNH) and decided upon a two-decade investment time horizon.
| Start date: | 12/01/2003 |
|
|||
| End date: | 11/30/2023 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $27.33 | ||||
| End price/share: | $552.97 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 365.90 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 450.24 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $41.35 | ||||
| Total return: | 2,389.71% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 17.43% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $249,084.05 | ||||
The above analysis shows the two-decade investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 17.43%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $249,084.05 today (as of 11/30/2023). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 2,389.71% (something to think about: how might UNH shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Many investors out there refuse to own any stock that lacks a dividend; in the case of UnitedHealth Group Inc, investors have received $41.35/share in dividends these past 20 years examined in the exercise above. This means total return was driven not just by share price, but also by the dividends received (and what the investor did with those dividends). For this exercise, what we’ve done with the dividends is to assume they are reinvestted — i.e. used to purchase additional shares (the calculations use closing price on ex-date).
Based upon the most recent annualized dividend rate of 7.52/share, we calculate that UNH has a current yield of approximately 1.36%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 7.52 against the original $27.33/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 4.98%.
Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“I think you have to learn that there’s a company behind every stock, and that there’s only one real reason why stocks go up. Companies go from doing poorly to doing well or small companies grow to large companies.” — Peter Lynch
