“I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.”
— Warren Buffett
Investors can learn a lot from Warren Buffett, whose above quote teaches the importance of thinking about investment time horizon, and asking ourselves before buying any given stock: can we envision holding onto it for years — even a five year holding period possibly?
Suppose a “buy-and-hold” investor was considering an investment into Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) back in 2018: back then, such an investor may have been pondering this very same question. Had they answered “yes” to a full five year investment time horizon and then actually held for these past 5 years, here’s how that investment would have turned out.
| Start date: | 12/04/2018 |
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| End date: | 12/01/2023 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $324.47 | ||||
| End price/share: | $495.21 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 30.82 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 31.92 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $13.81 | ||||
| Total return: | 58.06% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 9.60% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $15,806.46 | ||||
As shown above, the five year investment result worked out well, with an annualized rate of return of 9.60%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $15,806.46 today (as of 12/01/2023). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 58.06% (something to think about: how might HUM shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Humana Inc. paid investors a total of $13.81/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 3.54/share, we calculate that HUM has a current yield of approximately 0.71%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 3.54 against the original $324.47/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 0.22%.
One more investment quote to leave you with:
“I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money.” — Pablo Picasso
