“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 Kimberly-Clark Corp. (NYSE: KMB)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2018.
| Start date: | 12/12/2018 |
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| End date: | 12/11/2023 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $113.92 | ||||
| End price/share: | $120.97 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 87.78 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 103.88 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $22.32 | ||||
| Total return: | 25.66% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 4.67% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $12,563.51 | ||||
As shown above, the five year investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 4.67%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $12,563.51 today (as of 12/11/2023). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 25.66% (something to think about: how might KMB shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Kimberly-Clark Corp. paid investors a total of $22.32/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 4.72/share, we calculate that KMB has a current yield of approximately 3.90%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 4.72 against the original $113.92/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 3.42%.
Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“A 10% decline in the market is fairly common, it happens about once a year. Investors who realize this are less likely to sell in a panic, and more likely to remain invested, benefitting from the wealthbuilding power of stocks.” — Christopher Davis
