Photo credit: commons.wikimedia.org

“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 Interpublic Group of Companies Inc. (NYSE: IPG)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2015.

Start date: 03/04/2015
$10,000

03/04/2015
$11,193

03/03/2020
End date: 03/03/2020
Start price/share: $22.39
End price/share: $21.21
Starting shares: 446.63
Ending shares: 527.79
Dividends reinvested/share: $3.71
Total return: 11.94%
Average annual return: 2.28%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $11,193.87

The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 2.28%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $11,193.87 today (as of 03/03/2020). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 11.94% (something to think about: how might IPG shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Interpublic Group of Companies Inc. paid investors a total of $3.71/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 1.02/share, we calculate that IPG has a current yield of approximately 4.81%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 1.02 against the original $22.39/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 21.48%.

Another great investment quote to think about:
“Anyone who is not investing now is missing a tremendous opportunity.” — Carlos Slim