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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 PPG Industries Inc (NYSE: PPG)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2019.

Start date: 09/18/2019
$10,000

09/18/2019
  $11,672

09/17/2024
End date: 09/17/2024
Start price/share: $119.43
End price/share: $127.46
Starting shares: 83.73
Ending shares: 91.57
Dividends reinvested/share: $11.81
Total return: 16.71%
Average annual return: 3.14%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $11,672.73

The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 3.14%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $11,672.73 today (as of 09/17/2024). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 16.71% (something to think about: how might PPG shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that PPG Industries Inc paid investors a total of $11.81/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 2.72/share, we calculate that PPG has a current yield of approximately 2.13%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 2.72 against the original $119.43/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 1.78%.

Another great investment quote to think about:
“Although it’s easy to forget sometimes, a share is not a lottery ticket… it’s part-ownership of a business.” — Peter Lynch