The Webjet Limited (ASX: WEB) share price has flown in circles over the last decade.
Before 2020, the online travel agent's shares had a healthy upward trajectory. However, the emergence of COVID-19 put the world at a standstill, with restrictions placed on both domestic and international travel.
This severely impacted Webjet's operations, sending the business into deep hibernation mode.
Visibility around travel remained unclear for two years. However, things have finally started to take a turn.
Below, we take a look at the power of long-term investing. We will calculate how much you would have made if you invested $10,000 in Webjet shares a decade ago.
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What if you had invested $10,000 in Webjet shares 10 years ago?
If you had invested $10,000 in Webjet shares in 2012, you would have bought them for $2.18 a pop. This would have given you approximately 4,587 shares, without topping up during the downward periods.
Fast-forward to today and the current Webjet share price is $5.58. This means that those 4,587 shares would be worth $25,595.46. When looking at percentage terms, this implies a gain of around 155%.
While this is a solid return, let's not forget that Webjet shares have experienced some severe turbulence en route.
In 2020, the company's share price plunged from around the $13 mark in February to a multi-year low of $2.25 by April. This represents a massive 82% fall in value over just a few weeks.
Nonetheless, if you were brave enough to hold tight, Webjet has slowly been on the mend in the past two years.
What about the dividends?
Webjet has made 17 dividend payments to shareholders from 2012 to 2022.
Adding those 17 dividends payments gives us an amount of $1.36 per share. Calculating the number of shares owned against the total dividend payment gives us a figure of $6,238.32.
When putting both the initial investment gains and dividend distribution, an investor would have roughly $31,833.78, or a $21,833.78 profit.
In comparison, investing the same amount in the ASX 200 would have netted you a total of $17,125.35. Minus the $10,000 that was parked, this gives you a $7,125.35 profit.
As you can see, investing in Webjet would have more than tripled what you would have gotten from investing in the benchmark index.
