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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 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 Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (NASD: WBA)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2019.

Start date: 11/06/2019
$10,000

11/06/2019
  $2,084

11/05/2024
End date: 11/05/2024
Start price/share: $59.49
End price/share: $9.62
Starting shares: 168.10
Ending shares: 216.62
Dividends reinvested/share: $8.79
Total return: -79.16%
Average annual return: -26.91%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $2,084.09

The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out poorly, with an annualized rate of return of -26.91%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $2,084.09 today (as of 11/05/2024). On a total return basis, that’s a result of -79.16% (something to think about: how might WBA shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc paid investors a total of $8.79/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 1/share, we calculate that WBA has a current yield of approximately 10.39%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 1 against the original $59.49/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 17.47%.

More investment wisdom to ponder:
“Every once in a while, the market does something so stupid it takes your breath away.” — Jim Cramer