“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 Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2020.
| Start date: | 11/06/2020 |
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| End date: | 11/05/2025 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $432.55 | ||||
| End price/share: | $264.94 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 23.12 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 24.15 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $16.31 | ||||
| Total return: | -36.01% | ||||
| Average annual return: | -8.54% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $6,399.65 | ||||
The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out poorly, with an annualized rate of return of -8.54%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $6,399.65 today (as of 11/05/2025). On a total return basis, that’s a result of -36.01% (something to think about: how might HUM shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Humana Inc. paid investors a total of $16.31/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 3.54/share, we calculate that HUM has a current yield of approximately 1.34%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 3.54 against the original $432.55/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 0.31%.
More investment wisdom to ponder:
“Nearly every time I strayed from the herd, I’ve made a lot of money. Wandering away from the action is the way to find the new action.” — Jim Rogers
