“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 Wabtec Corp (NYSE: WAB)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2020.
| Start date: | 01/07/2020 |
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| End date: | 01/06/2025 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $79.97 | ||||
| End price/share: | $192.23 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 125.05 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 128.90 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $3.04 | ||||
| Total return: | 147.79% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 19.89% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $24,781.67 | ||||
The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 19.89%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $24,781.67 today (as of 01/06/2025). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 147.79% (something to think about: how might WAB shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Wabtec Corp paid investors a total of $3.04/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 .8/share, we calculate that WAB has a current yield of approximately 0.42%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of .8 against the original $79.97/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 0.53%.
Another great investment quote to think about:
“All intelligent investing is value investing: acquiring more that you are paying for. You must value the business in order to value the stock.” — Charlie Munger
