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“I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.”

— Warren Buffett

The investment philosophy practiced by Warren Buffett calls for investors to take a long-term horizon when making an investment, such as a five year holding period (or even longer), and reconsider making the investment in the first place if unable to envision holding the stock for at least five years. Today, we look at how such a long-term strategy would have done for investors in Blackrock Inc (NYSE: BLK) back in 2019, holding through to today.

Start date: 07/18/2019
$10,000

07/18/2019
  $20,147

07/17/2024
End date: 07/17/2024
Start price/share: $475.14
End price/share: $841.09
Starting shares: 21.05
Ending shares: 23.95
Dividends reinvested/share: $87.36
Total return: 101.43%
Average annual return: 15.03%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $20,147.55

As we can see, the five year investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 15.03%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $20,147.55 today (as of 07/17/2024). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 101.43% (something to think about: how might BLK shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Beyond share price change, another component of BLK’s total return these past 5 years has been the payment by Blackrock Inc of $87.36/share in dividends to shareholders. Automatic reinvestment of dividends can be a wonderful way to compound returns, and for the above calculations we presume that dividends are reinvested into additional shares of stock. (For the purpose of these calcuations, the closing price on ex-date is used).

Based upon the most recent annualized dividend rate of 20.4/share, we calculate that BLK has a current yield of approximately 2.43%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 20.4 against the original $475.14/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 0.51%.

Another great investment quote to think about:
“Investors should always keep in mind that the most important metric is not the returns achieved but the returns weighed against the risks incurred. Ultimately, nothing should be more important to investors than the ability to sleep soundly at night.” — Seth Klarman