“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 eBay Inc. (NASD: EBAY)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2020.
| Start date: | 01/02/2020 |
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| End date: | 12/31/2024 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $36.30 | ||||
| End price/share: | $61.95 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 275.48 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 300.29 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $4.32 | ||||
| Total return: | 86.03% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 13.22% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $18,604.40 | ||||
As shown above, the five year investment result worked out quite well, with an annualized rate of return of 13.22%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $18,604.40 today (as of 12/31/2024). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 86.03% (something to think about: how might EBAY shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that eBay Inc. paid investors a total of $4.32/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 1.08/share, we calculate that EBAY has a current yield of approximately 1.74%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 1.08 against the original $36.30/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 4.79%.
Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“The function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.” — John Galbraith
