If You'd Invested $10,000 in The Southern Company 10 Years Ago, This Is How Much You Would Have Today
The Southern Company (NYSE: SO) is in the middle of doing something that no other U.S. utility is doing. It has completed one large-scale nuclear power plant and hopes to have a second one up and running by early 2024, at the latest. Building these two power plans hasn't been an easy process, but the stock still managed to perform very well relative to those of peers over the past decade.
Here's a look at how well patient dividend investors have done, and some thoughts about the rewards that could accrue from here.
If you'd invested $10,000 into Southern 10 years ago, that investment would be worth a little under $16,000 today, looking at the stock price performance. That's a lousy return compared to the S&P 500 Index, using the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: SPY) as a proxy, which would have turned the same investment into nearly $26,700. However, utilities are generally expected to be slow and steady investments, usually with a heavy emphasis on dividends. Utilities Select Sector SPDR (NYSEMKT: XLU), which owns the utility stocks contained in the S&P 500, would have turned $10,000 into about $16,700. That's a better benchmark, and the returns are a lot closer.
Source Fool.com
