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“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 AMETEK Inc (NYSE: AME)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2018.

Start date: 11/06/2018
$10,000

11/06/2018
  $19,925

11/03/2023
End date: 11/03/2023
Start price/share: $74.64
End price/share: $143.70
Starting shares: 133.98
Ending shares: 138.67
Dividends reinvested/share: $3.85
Total return: 99.26%
Average annual return: 14.81%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $19,925.33

The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out quite well, with an annualized rate of return of 14.81%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $19,925.33 today (as of 11/03/2023). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 99.26% (something to think about: how might AME shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that AMETEK Inc paid investors a total of $3.85/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/share, we calculate that AME has a current yield of approximately 0.70%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 1 against the original $74.64/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 0.94%.

Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“We don’t have to be smarter than the rest. We have to be more disciplined than the rest.” — Warren Buffett