“When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.”
— Warren Buffett
The Warren Buffett investment philosophy calls for a long-term investment horizon, where a two-decade holding period, or even longer, would fit right into the strategy. How would such a strategy have worked out for an investment into Las Vegas Sands Corp (NYSE: LVS)? Today, we examine the outcome of a two-decade investment into the stock back in 2005.
| Start date: | 07/01/2005 |
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| End date: | 06/30/2025 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $36.25 | ||||
| End price/share: | $43.51 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 275.86 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 428.68 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $24.12 | ||||
| Total return: | 86.52% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 3.16% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $18,636.95 | ||||
The above analysis shows the two-decade investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 3.16%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $18,636.95 today (as of 06/30/2025). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 86.52% (something to think about: how might LVS shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Las Vegas Sands Corp paid investors a total of $24.12/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 1/share, we calculate that LVS has a current yield of approximately 2.30%. 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 $36.25/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 6.34%.
Another great investment quote to think about:
“Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up.” — Charlie Munger
