“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
— 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 Analog Devices Inc (NASD: ADI)? Today, we examine the outcome of a two-decade investment into the stock back in 2005.
| Start date: | 11/25/2005 |
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| End date: | 11/21/2025 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $38.02 | ||||
| End price/share: | $232.32 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 263.02 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 419.36 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $36.30 | ||||
| Total return: | 874.27% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 12.05% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $97,358.21 | ||||
The above analysis shows the two-decade investment result worked out quite well, with an annualized rate of return of 12.05%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $97,358.21 today (as of 11/21/2025). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 874.27% (something to think about: how might ADI shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Analog Devices Inc paid investors a total of $36.30/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 3.96/share, we calculate that ADI has a current yield of approximately 1.70%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 3.96 against the original $38.02/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 4.47%.
One more piece of investment wisdom to leave you with:
“The older I get, the more I see a straight path where I want to go. If you’re going to hunt elephants, don’t get off the trail for a rabbit.” — T. Boone Pickens
