“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 SunTrust Banks Inc (NYSE: STI)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2014.
| Start date: | 06/16/2014 |
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| End date: | 06/13/2019 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $39.85 | ||||
| End price/share: | $64.07 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 250.94 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 283.18 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $6.44 | ||||
| Total return: | 81.43% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 12.67% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $18,145.03 | ||||
As shown above, the five year investment result worked out quite well, with an annualized rate of return of 12.67%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $18,145.03 today (as of 06/13/2019). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 81.43% (something to think about: how might STI shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that SunTrust Banks Inc paid investors a total of $6.44/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 2/share, we calculate that STI has a current yield of approximately 3.12%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 2 against the original $39.85/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 7.83%.
Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“Although it’s easy to forget sometimes, a share is not a lottery ticket… it’s part-ownership of a business.” — Peter Lynch
