“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
— Warren Buffett
The Warren Buffett investment philosophy calls for a long-term investment horizon, where a two-decade holding period, or even longer, would fit right into the strategy. How would such a strategy have worked out for an investment into Costco Wholesale Corp (NASD: COST)? Today, we examine the outcome of a two-decade investment into the stock back in 2005.
| Start date: | 10/17/2005 |
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| End date: | 10/16/2025 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $46.61 | ||||
| End price/share: | $925.62 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 214.55 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 315.95 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $83.39 | ||||
| Total return: | 2,824.53% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 18.38% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $292,664.31 | ||||
The above analysis shows the two-decade investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 18.38%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $292,664.31 today (as of 10/16/2025). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 2,824.53% (something to think about: how might COST shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Beyond share price change, another component of COST’s total return these past 20 years has been the payment by Costco Wholesale Corp of $83.39/share in dividends to shareholders. Automatic reinvestment of dividends can be a wonderful way to compound returns, and for the above calculations we presume that dividends are reinvested into additional shares of stock. (For the purpose of these calcuations, the closing price on ex-date is used).
Based upon the most recent annualized dividend rate of 5.2/share, we calculate that COST has a current yield of approximately 0.56%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 5.2 against the original $46.61/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 1.20%.
Another great investment quote to think about:
“All the opportunity in the world means nothing if you don’t actually pull the trigger.” — Sam Zell
