Telstra Group Ltd (ASX: TLS) shares have seen their fair share of ups and downs since early 2021, but the passive income they've provided has only trended higher.
On the share price front, 2021 was a strong recovery year for the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) telco, after a tumultuous 2020.
On 15 January 2021, you could have picked up Telstra shares for $3.12 apiece, already up from the $2.68 a share they were trading for on 30 October 2020.
That means with a $5,000 investment, you could have bought 1,602 Telstra shares with some pocket change left over.
Aside from the passive income you'd have received from the past eight fully franked dividends the telco has paid out since then, you'd also have enjoyed some solid share price gains. Though as you can see on the chart below, not without some sizeable ups and downs along the way.
In late morning trade today, Telstra shares are up 0.2%, changing hands for $3.86 apiece. So, the 1,602 shares you bought for $5,000 in January 2021 would today be worth $6,183.72.
Now, let's add those dividends back in.
Tapping Telstra shares for passive income
As I said up top, if you'd bought Telstra shares for passive income in January 2021, you'd have been eligible to receive the past eight dividend payments.
As for that growth trend, the first three dividends would have come in at 8 cents a share. The next three would have come in at 8.5 cents a share. And the past two Telstra dividends you would have banked were upped to 9 cents a share.
A bit of back-of-the-napkin math tells me that this equates to a total payout of 67.5 cents a share.
That means you'd already have banked $1,081.35 in passive income from those 1,602 shares, with potential tax benefits from those franking credits.
To gauge your accumulated returns, let's add that 67.5 cents a share to today's share price of $3.86, which then comes out to $4.535 a share.
Highlighting the importance of passive income, this brings the accumulated value of your 1,602 Telstra share bought for $5,000 in January 2021 to $7.265.07. Or a gain of 45%.
What's been happening with the ASX 200 telco?
The last price-sensitive news we had from Telstra was on 15 August, when the company reported its full FY 2024 results.
Spurring the 6% year on year increase in passive income (to 18 cents per share), Telstra reported a 1% year on year boost in total income to $23.5 billion.
And underlying net profit after tax (NPAT) was up 7.5% from FY 2023 to $2.3 billion.
