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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 Franklin Resources Inc (NYSE: BEN)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2019.

Start date: 12/10/2019
$10,000

12/10/2019
  $10,874

12/09/2024
End date: 12/09/2024
Start price/share: $25.84
End price/share: $22.30
Starting shares: 387.00
Ending shares: 487.61
Dividends reinvested/share: $5.80
Total return: 8.74%
Average annual return: 1.69%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $10,874.55

As shown above, the five year investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 1.69%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $10,874.55 today (as of 12/09/2024). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 8.74% (something to think about: how might BEN shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Franklin Resources Inc paid investors a total of $5.80/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 1.28/share, we calculate that BEN has a current yield of approximately 5.74%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 1.28 against the original $25.84/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 22.21%.

Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t, pays it.” — Albert Einstein