“When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.”
— Warren Buffett
Investors can learn a lot from Warren Buffett, whose above quote teaches the importance of thinking about investment time horizon, and asking ourselves before buying any given stock: can we envision holding onto it for years — even a twenty year holding period possibly?
Suppose a “buy-and-hold” investor was considering an investment into Crown Castle International Corp (NYSE: CCI) back in 2001: back then, such an investor may have been pondering this very same question. Had they answered “yes” to a full twenty year investment time horizon and then actually held for these past 20 years, here’s how that investment would have turned out.
| Start date: | 05/10/2001 |
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| End date: | 05/07/2021 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $19.40 | ||||
| End price/share: | $183.32 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 515.46 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 666.43 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $27.83 | ||||
| Total return: | 1,121.70% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 13.33% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $122,234.99 | ||||
The above analysis shows the twenty year investment result worked out quite well, with an annualized rate of return of 13.33%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $122,234.99 today (as of 05/07/2021). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 1,121.70% (something to think about: how might CCI shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Crown Castle International Corp paid investors a total of $27.83/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 5.32/share, we calculate that CCI has a current yield of approximately 2.90%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 5.32 against the original $19.40/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 14.95%.
One more investment quote to leave you with:
“While some might mistakenly consider value investing a mechanical tool for identifying bargains, it is actually a comprehensive investment philosophy that emphasizes the need to perform in-depth fundamental analysis, pursue long-term investment results, limit risk, and resist crowd psychology.” — Seth Klarman
