If You Invested $10,000 in Enterprise Products Partners in March 2020, This Is How Much You Would Have Today

Energy prices collapsed during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Just about everything that touched the industry nosedived, including Enterprise Products Partners (NYSE: EPD). It turned out to be a great buying point in an industry historically prone to swift and dramatic price swings. Only, when it comes to Enterprise, there are some important things to remember that make it stand out, and the math of figuring out total returns will help you see the key takeaway.

If you had bought $10,000 worth of units in Enterprise Products Partners on March 16, 2020, they would be worth roughly $17,650 today (master limited partnerships, or MLPs, like Enterprise trade in units, not shares). That's a pretty generous return of 76% or so in a touch over two years. This is, frankly, how most investors look at returns, but it isn't the best way to consider this midstream giant's performance.

That's because you also need to take into consideration Enterprise's yield. MLPs are specifically designed to pass income on to unitholders and generally have notable distribution yields. Enterprise's yield was 7.6% as of Thursday's close. It was over 14% during the worst of the pandemic bear market. When you add reinvested distributions to the return calculation, that $10,000 investment would today be worth around $21,400 -- a roughly 115% total return.

Source Fool.com