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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 Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA)? Today, we examine the outcome of a ten year investment into the stock back in 2014.

Start date: 08/22/2014
$10,000

08/22/2014
  $15,652

08/21/2024
End date: 08/21/2024
Start price/share: $127.46
End price/share: $173.43
Starting shares: 78.46
Ending shares: 90.27
Dividends reinvested/share: $31.53
Total return: 56.55%
Average annual return: 4.58%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $15,652.83

The above analysis shows the ten year investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 4.58%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $15,652.83 today (as of 08/21/2024). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 56.55% (something to think about: how might BA shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Boeing Co. paid investors a total of $31.53/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 8.22/share, we calculate that BA has a current yield of approximately 4.74%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 8.22 against the original $127.46/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 3.72%.

Another great investment quote to think about:
“Sentimentality about an investments leads to lack of discipline.” — Sam Zell