“When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.”
— 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 Healthpeak Properties Inc (NYSE: DOC)? Today, we examine the outcome of a two-decade investment into the stock back in 2005.
| Start date: | 12/19/2005 |
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| End date: | 12/18/2025 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $26.31 | ||||
| End price/share: | $16.41 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 380.08 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 1,149.49 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $33.86 | ||||
| Total return: | 88.63% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 3.22% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $18,855.06 | ||||
The above analysis shows the two-decade investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 3.22%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $18,855.06 today (as of 12/18/2025). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 88.63% (something to think about: how might DOC shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Healthpeak Properties Inc paid investors a total of $33.86/share in dividends over the 20 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 1.22004/share, we calculate that DOC has a current yield of approximately 7.43%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 1.22004 against the original $26.31/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 28.24%.
Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“Never test the depth of a river with both feet.” — Warren Buffett