“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 Franklin Resources Inc (NYSE: BEN)? Today, we examine the outcome of a two-decade investment into the stock back in 2006.
| Start date: | 01/13/2006 |
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| End date: | 01/12/2026 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $32.68 | ||||
| End price/share: | $25.64 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 306.00 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 575.19 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $19.38 | ||||
| Total return: | 47.48% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 1.96% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $14,746.50 | ||||
The above analysis shows the two-decade investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 1.96%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $14,746.50 today (as of 01/12/2026). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 47.48% (something to think about: how might BEN shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Notice that Franklin Resources Inc paid investors a total of $19.38/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 1.32/share, we calculate that BEN has a current yield of approximately 5.15%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 1.32 against the original $32.68/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 15.76%.
Another great investment quote to think about:
“If you are not willing to own a stock for 10 years, do not even think about owning it for 10 minutes.” — Warren Buffett
