Pro Medicus Ltd (ASX: PME) shares have been on an absolute tear for the past five years.
Don't just take my word for it.
Check out the price chart for the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) health imaging company below.
Now, I'm not much for technical analysis. Instead, I prefer to judge a stock's future value more from its fundamentals than its price trading history.
But this is a really solid and sustained growth trend we see here.
Five years ago, on 16 August 2019, I could have picked up Pro Medicus shares for what we now know is a bargain basement $25.98 apiece.
At yesterday's close, shares were trading for $150.67, up just under 480%.
Meaning my $8,000 investment in the ASX 200 healthcare stock five years ago would be worth $46,396 today.
But wait.
There's more.
Don't forget the dividends!
Atop the remarkable five-year Pro Medicus share price gains, the ASX 200 company also has regularly paid out modest, fully franked dividends.
And I'd have been eligible to receive the past 10 dividend payouts (five final and five interim) had I bought the stock on 16 August 2019.
All told, those 10 payouts add up to $1.02 a share in fully franked dividends.
Now, we'll assume I spent that extra passive income as it came in rather than reinvesting it.
In that case, the accumulated value of my Pro Medicus shares today would be $151.69 a share. Or a gain of just under 484% in five years.
That sees my $8,000 investment soar to $46,710 today.
Not bad!
What's been driving Pro Medicus shares higher?
Five years is far too long a time span to cover for the purposes of this article.
So, we'll just drill into Pro Medicus' financial results for the 12 months ending 30 June (FY 2024).
Those were reported this Wednesday, 14 August. And Pro Medicus shares closed up 7.2% on the day.
ASX 200 investor interest was piqued by a number of strong metrics for the financial year.
Highlights included a 29.3% year on year increase in revenue to $161.5 million. And net profit soared by 36.5% from FY 2023 to $82.8 million.
On the back of these strong results, management declared an all-time high fully franked final dividend of 22 cents per share.
That one's not even factored into my five-year gains yet. That's because Pro Medicus trades ex-dividend on 4 September. Meaning I'd need to own shares at market close on 3 September to bank that added passive income.
And CEO Sam Hupert expects more strong performance from Pro Medicus shares moving forward.
"We have a bit over 7% of the total addressable market in the US and growing, so there is still a huge amount of runway ahead of us," he said earlier this week.
