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“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”

— Warren Buffett

The Warren Buffett investment philosophy calls for a long-term investment horizon, where a ten year holding period, or even longer, would fit right into the strategy. How would such a strategy have worked out for an investment into Dominion Energy Inc (NYSE: D)? Today, we examine the outcome of a ten year investment into the stock back in 2016.

Start date: 01/11/2016
$10,000

01/11/2016
  $12,825

01/08/2026
End date: 01/08/2026
Start price/share: $69.41
End price/share: $57.80
Starting shares: 144.07
Ending shares: 221.96
Dividends reinvested/share: $29.50
Total return: 28.29%
Average annual return: 2.52%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $12,825.84

The above analysis shows the ten year investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 2.52%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 10 years ago into $12,825.84 today (as of 01/08/2026). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 28.29% (something to think about: how might D shares perform over the next 10 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Dominion Energy Inc paid investors a total of $29.50/share in dividends over the 10 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 2.67/share, we calculate that D has a current yield of approximately 4.62%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 2.67 against the original $69.41/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 6.66%.

Another great investment quote to think about:
“Don’t wait for the perfect time, you will wait forever. Always take advantage of the time you’re given and make it perfect.” — Daymond John