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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 MGM Resorts International (NYSE: MGM)? Today, we examine the outcome of a ten year investment into the stock back in 2014.

Start date: 01/23/2014
$10,000

01/23/2014
  $17,911

01/22/2024
End date: 01/22/2024
Start price/share: $25.18
End price/share: $42.56
Starting shares: 397.14
Ending shares: 420.98
Dividends reinvested/share: $1.62
Total return: 79.17%
Average annual return: 6.00%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $17,911.34

The above analysis shows the ten year investment result worked out well, with an annualized rate of return of 6.00%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $17,911.34 today (as of 01/22/2024). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 79.17% (something to think about: how might MGM shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that MGM Resorts International paid investors a total of $1.62/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 .01/share, we calculate that MGM has a current yield of approximately 0.00%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of .01 against the original $25.18/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 0.00%.

One more investment quote to leave you with:
“The best stock to buy is the one you already own.” — Peter Lynch