The Woodside share price has gained just 1% in 5 years. Have the dividends been worth it?

The Woodside Petroleum Limited (ASX: WPL) share price has travelled on a rollercoaster over the course of the last few years.

The impact of COVID-19 led government at all levels around Australia to enforce mandated restrictions on passenger movements. This steered Woodside shares south as demand for oil plummeted throughout the pandemic.

However, the recent war in Ukraine and heavy-handed sanctions on Russia's energy markets has led oil prices to spike. In turn, Woodside shares have recorded a stellar year on the back of strong demand for oil and gas.

Below, we calculate if the dividends have been worth the wait if a shareholder made an investment five years ago.

What if you had invested $10,000 in Woodside shares 5 years ago?

If you had invested $10,000 in Woodside shares on this day five years ago, you would have bought them for around $32.60 each. This would have given you approximately 306 shares without factoring in any dividend reinvestments over the years.

Fast-forward to today, and the current Woodside share price is $32.90. This means those 306 shares would now be worth $10,067.40. When considering percentage terms, this would have given you relatively flat returns for the period.

In contrast, the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) has returned a yearly average of 4.89% to shareholders in the past five years.

And the dividends?

Over the course of the last five years, Woodside has made a total of 10 bi-annual dividend payments from April 2017 to March 2022.

Adding those 10 dividends payments gives us an amount of $6.9953 per share. Calculating the number of shares owned against the total dividend payment gives us a figure of $2,140.57.

When putting both the initial investment gains and dividend distribution, an investor would have made roughly $12,207.97.

In comparison, investing the same amount in the ASX 200 would have netted you a total figure of $12,695.60.

As you can see, parking your money in the benchmark index would have retuned a slightly better result.

Woodside share price snapshot

Over the past 12 months, the Woodside share price has accelerated by around 35%, driven by favourable market conditions.

Its shares hit a 52-week high of $34.60 in early March, before finding support around the $32 mark.

Woodside has a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 12.47 and commands a market capitalisation of roughly $32.37 billion.