The best way to make money investing in the stock market is to invest for the long-term, which is why I think it’s important to look at what would have happened if you had invested in popular stocks 10 years ago.

Today I’m looking at Verizon’s last 10 years, how they’ve been investing their time and money, and what you would have earned by putting $10,000 in their stock in 2014 up until now.

Becoming a media company

Notably in 2015 and 2016 Verizon gobbled up the remnants of AOL and Yahoo for a combined over $9 billion with the goal of diversifying themselves away from just a company that serves media through their cellular and internet networks to a company that creates that media directly.

On the back of these combined assets, they launched Oath in 2017 which unified their recently acquired assets’ content and advertising effort.

Investing in the core business

In 2018, they launched the world’s first commercial 5G broadband internet service called Verizon 5G Home in parts of Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Sacramento, a move more in-line with their traditional core business.

New CEO and renewed focus out of media

2019 saw new CEO Hans Vestberg take over with a focus was on building out 5G technology, which was seen as crucial for the next generation of mobile communications, and the following year the digital media experiment began to end with sales of Tumblr (a division of Yahoo) sold to the parent company of WordPress, followed by the sale of Yahoo and AOL to Apollo for $5 billion – delivering a significant loss versus the acquisition cost, but in my opinion, a great move for long-term shareholder value.

Doubling down on the core

And in 2022, Verizon completed its acquisition of TracFone Wireless, a deal that brought 21 million TracFone subscribers to Verizon – for a little under $7 billion in cash and stock.

How much $10,000 would have made you

So how did all these moves work out for shareholders? For simplicity, I’m assuming you bought it on the first trading day of 2014, and measured performance up until today.

 

Obviously, this isn’t great. Your $10,000 would now be worth a little more than $7300. With a 7.4% dividend, there are probably many who are considering investing in Verizon just for its dividend. But this would only add another $4300 or so to your returns. Meaning you would have made money by investing in Verizon, but compared to the $23,000 you would earned by simply investing in the S&P 500, it’s an incredible underperformance.

Should you invest in Verizon for the next 10 years?

If you’re thinking about starting a new or continuing a current investment with Verizon, you should make sure you’re not buying the stock just for its dividend, but because you believe in their ability to scale in their core business – telecommunications. If you see them return to the mistakes of the mid 2010s, it’s time to sell.

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