How to Calculate Stock Returns: Altria’s Flat Price Hid a 93% Gain
To calculate a stock’s return, divide what your shares are worth at the end, dividends included, by what you paid, then subtract one. Done that way, Altria’s shares returned 93% from 2016 through 2025 with dividends reinvested, by our calculation, even though the share price ended a little below its 2015 close.
The short answer. Divide what the holding is worth at the end by what you paid and subtract one. Dividends count either as cash added to that end value or as extra shares inside it, and a yearly rate is compounded instead of averaged. Skip a step and the answer can be far off, which matters to anyone comparing a stock with a fund or a savings account. This guide works it on four real stocks over ten years, from Altria’s hidden 93% gain to a Netflix split, with every dividend checked against each company’s records or Nasdaq’s. The stock return calculator reruns the arithmetic for any stock.
Altria, December 31, 2015 to December 31, 2025
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How to calculate stock returns from the share price
Divide the price at the end by the price you paid and subtract one. Multiply by 100 and you have the percent change in the share price alone, which is called the price return.
Altria closed 2015 at $58.21 a share and closed 2025 at $57.66. Divide the second price by the first, subtract one, and the price return over those ten years comes to minus 0.9%.
Quote pages and price charts often show just this. It leaves out every dividend the company paid along the way, and for some stocks, held for years, the dividends turn out to be most of what an owner got.
Every example here runs from the close of December 31, 2015 to the close of December 31, 2025. The four stocks were picked because each shows a piece of the arithmetic clearly, and none is offered as a better or worse holding than another.
- Price return Counts only the change in the share price.
- Total return with cash dividends Adds the dividends paid out to the price change.
- Total return with dividends reinvested Each dividend is put into more shares, which earn later dividends.
How to calculate total return on a stock with dividends
Count the dividends in one of two ways. Kept as cash, add them to the end price, divide by the start price and subtract one. Reinvested, they are already inside a larger share count, so divide the end value of all the shares by what you paid and subtract one.
Kept as cash, Altria’s dividends came to $33.77 a share over the ten years, which lifts the total return to 57.1%, by our calculation. That counts every payment that went ex-dividend by the end of 2025, meaning the stock had started trading without it. The last of them, $1.06, was paid on January 9, 2026.
Reinvested, each dividend buys more shares, and those shares collect the next dividend. That took 100 Altria shares bought at the end of 2015 to 195 by the end of 2025, a total return of 93.1% before taxes, by our calculation.
That reinvested figure assumes each dividend bought shares on its ex-dividend date at the previous close minus the dividend. Fractions of a share are allowed, and no taxes, fees or commissions are taken out. In a taxable account, the tax on each dividend would leave less money to reinvest, so the result would be lower.
Altria’s own annual reports land close by. Its 2020 and 2025 Form 10-K filings each carry a five-year return table that also reinvests dividends from the ex-dividend date. Joined, the two tables give 93.7% over the same ten years, by our calculation. By our reading, the half-point gap likely comes from the price each dividend is assumed to buy at, and from joining two data providers’ series.
By our calculation, $10,000 put into Altria at the 2015 close grew to $19,312 by the end of 2025 with the dividends reinvested. With them kept as cash, the January 2026 payment included, it came to $15,707.
- Start with the shares bought The amount paid divided by the starting share price gives the starting share count.
- Each dividend adds shares On each ex-dividend date, the dividend is treated as spent on extra shares at the previous close minus the dividend.
- Repeat for every dividend The extra shares join the count before the next dividend, so later payments are larger.
- Value the final shares The final share count times the end price, divided by the amount paid, minus one, is the total return.
Verizon shows the same effect turning a loss into a gain. Its share price fell 11.9% over the ten years, while its total return with dividends reinvested was 48.5%, by our calculation.
Reinvesting does not always come out ahead. For Intel, keeping the dividends as cash gave a 35.7% total return and reinvesting them gave 35.5%, by our calculation. By our reading, the shares those dividends bought shared in Intel’s later price drops.
The larger the dividends are next to the price, the wider the gap between price return and total return. By our calculation, Altria’s dividends over the decade came to 58% of what a share cost at the end of 2015. The quarterly payment also kept rising, to $1.06 in August 2025, which Altria described as its 60th increase in 56 years.
Show the data
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| 2016 | $2.35 |
| 2017 | $2.54 |
| 2018 | $3.00 |
| 2019 | $3.28 |
| 2020 | $3.40 |
| 2021 | $3.52 |
| 2022 | $3.68 |
| 2023 | $3.84 |
| 2024 | $4.00 |
| 2025 | $4.16 |
Show the data
| Stock | Price return | Total return, dividends as cash | Total return, dividends reinvested | Reinvested, compounded per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Altria (MO) | -0.9% | +57.1% | +93.1% | 6.8% |
| Verizon (VZ) | -11.9% | +42.2% | +48.5% | 4.0% |
| Intel (INTC) | +7.1% | +35.7% | +35.5% | 3.1% |
Source: StockTitan price and dividend history, closes of December 31, 2015 and 2025 and every dividend with an ex-dividend date in 2016 to 2025; our calculation, before taxes and fees.
Average annual return vs CAGR
Averaging yearly returns overstates how fast money grew whenever those returns swing. Compound annual growth, called CAGR, is the one steady yearly rate that turns the start value into the end value. That is the yearly figure that matches what an account actually did.
Intel shows how far apart the two can land. Its ten yearly price returns from 2016 to 2025 include a 48.7% drop in 2022 and a 90.1% jump in 2023. Added up and divided by ten, they average 11.4% a year.
Compounded, the same decade took Intel’s share price from $34.45 to $36.90, which works out to 0.7% a year, by our calculation. A steady 11.4% a year for ten years would have nearly tripled the money.
The gap comes from how losses work. After Intel fell 60.1% in 2024, it needed to rise about 151% just to get back to where it was. Its 84.0% rise in 2025 was large, and it still left the price below its 2023 close.
The formula is CAGR = (end value / start value) ^ (1 / years) - 1. It compounds whatever end value you give it, the share price alone or the holding with its dividends.
For Altria with dividends reinvested, $10,000 grew to $19,312 over the ten years, and the formula turns that into 6.8% a year, compounded.
Over just 2023 and 2024, Intel’s two yearly returns average 15.0% a year. Yet on price alone, the shares lost 24.1% over the two years.
Show the data
| Year | Intel close, Dec. 31 or last session | Price return that year |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $34.45 | |
| 2016 | $36.27 | +5.3% |
| 2017 | $46.16 | +27.3% |
| 2018 | $46.93 | +1.7% |
| 2019 | $59.85 | +27.5% |
| 2020 | $49.82 | -16.8% |
| 2021 | $51.50 | +3.4% |
| 2022 | $26.43 | -48.7% |
| 2023 | $50.25 | +90.1% |
| 2024 | $20.05 | -60.1% |
| 2025 | $36.90 | +84.0% |
Source: StockTitan price history, closes on today’s share count, without dividends; the ten yearly returns average 11.4%, against 0.7% a year compounded, our calculation.
Does a stock split change your return?
No. A split gives owners more shares at a lower price, and the holding is worth the same. Comparing raw prices from before and after a split gives a wrong return, so use split-adjusted prices, which divide every older price by the split ratio.
Netflix announced a ten-for-one split on October 30, 2025, and its release set split-adjusted trading to begin on November 17. Each share held became ten.
At the old share count, Netflix’s last close before the split works out to $1,112.17, by our calculation, ten times the $111.217 that StockTitan’s split-adjusted history stores.
Its first close after the split was $110.29. Set against the old figure, the price looks as if it fell 90.1%. That drop is an artifact of comparing a price from before the split with one from after it, and no owner lost that money.
On split-adjusted prices the move was a 0.8% decline, an ordinary day for the stock.
| Before, Nov. 14, old share count | After, Nov. 17, 2025 | |
|---|---|---|
| Shares held | 10 | 100 |
| Price per share | $1,112.17 | $110.29 |
| Value of the holding | $11,121.70 | $11,029.00 |
The same trap works across years. Comparing Netflix’s unadjusted quotes across the split makes its price appear to have fallen 18.0% from the end of 2015 to the end of 2025, by our calculation. On split-adjusted prices the return was 719.7%.
Show the data
| Netflix close | Price |
|---|---|
| December 31, 2015, at the old share count (our calculation) | $114.38 |
| December 31, 2015, split adjusted | $11.44 |
| December 31, 2025 | $93.76 |
Source: StockTitan price history; the old-share-count price is the stored close times ten, the ratio in Netflix’s release.
Dividends per share need the same adjustment. A dividend paid before a split gets divided by the split ratio, so old and new payments are counted on the same share. Mixing adjusted prices with unadjusted dividends, or the reverse, counts the split twice or leaves it out. StockTitan’s guide to split-adjusted and raw prices walks through more cases.
How to calculate stock returns in Excel
Put the start price, the end price and the dividends in cells and use one short formula for each measure. Use split-adjusted closing prices and count each dividend once.
With the start price in A2, the end price in B2, the dividends per share in C2 and the number of years in D2, these formulas give each measure:
- Price return: =B2/A2-1
- Total return with dividends kept as cash: =(B2+C2)/A2-1
- Price CAGR, the compound yearly rate of the share price alone: =(B2/A2)^(1/D2)-1, or Excel’s built-in =RRI(D2,A2,B2)
- Total return CAGR: the same formula with the amount invested in A2 and the end value, reinvested shares or kept cash included, in B2
Format the results as percentages. The years in D2 can be a fraction, such as 2.5 for two and a half years. A yearly rate for a short holding is only a way to compare holdings of different lengths.
A reinvested total return needs one row per dividend, each adding the shares that payment buys, which is the steps chart above laid out as a table.
Most spreadsheet errors come from the data. Both prices need to come from one split-adjusted series. Some data sources also fold dividends into an adjusted close, and adding the dividends on top of that counts them twice. StockTitan’s closes are adjusted for splits only.
What a stock return calculation leaves out
The figures in this guide come before taxes, fees and inflation, and they assume one purchase held to the end. A real account can differ for any of those reasons.
Reinvesting does not make dividends tax free. If you use dividends to buy more stock at its fair market value, “you must still report the dividends as income,” according to IRS Publication 550. The IRS also explains that qualified dividends, ordinary dividends that meet its rules, are taxed at the lower rates that apply to capital gains, the profits from selling an investment.
Buying at different times breaks the single start and end formula, because each purchase has its own date and price. The DCA calculator, for dollar-cost averaging, handles regular purchases of a fixed amount. A spinoff, where a company hands owners shares of a separate business, also belongs in the return, and the stock return calculator leaves spinoffs out.
Our numbers
- Altria’s minus 0.9% on price, 57.1% with dividends as cash and 93.1% reinvested, or 6.8% a year compounded: its 2015 and 2025 closes and 40 dividends, before taxes.
- $10,000 in Altria becoming $15,707 or $19,312, and dividends worth 58% of the 2015 price: the same returns applied to $10,000, and $33.77 divided by $58.21.
- 93.7% from Altria’s own reports: the five-year return tables of its 2020 and 2025 Form 10-K filings multiplied together.
- Verizon’s minus 11.9% on price, 42.2% as cash and 48.5% reinvested, or 4.0% a year: the same dates and method.
- Intel’s 35.7% as cash against 35.5% reinvested, or 3.1% a year: the same dates and method.
- Intel’s 11.4% simple average against 0.7% a year compounded, and its 15.0% average and 24.1% loss over 2023 and 2024: its calendar-year price returns.
- Netflix’s 90.1% split-day drop on raw prices against a 0.8% decline, and 18.0% lower over ten years against 719.7%: stored closes, the older ones times ten.
Frequently asked questions
How do you calculate stock return percentage?
Divide the price at the end by the price you paid, subtract one and multiply by 100. Shares bought at $50 that are worth $60 have returned 20% on price. For the total return with dividends kept as cash, add them to the $60 before you divide.
Does total return include dividends?
Yes. Total return counts dividends as well as the change in the share price. Some sources count the dividends as cash and others assume they buy more shares, so it is worth checking which. For Verizon over 2016 to 2025, the two methods gave 42.2% and 48.5%.
Is average annual return the same as CAGR?
Not always. A simple average adds the yearly returns and divides by the number of years, while CAGR is the steady rate that links the start value to the end value. Some sources use average annual return to mean the compound rate, so check how a figure was worked out.
How do I calculate returns if I bought shares at different times?
Treat each purchase as its own investment, with its own date and price. For one yearly rate across all of them, Excel’s XIRR function takes a list of dated amounts. Purchases go in as negative numbers and today’s value of the holding as a positive one. Dividends taken out as cash go in as positive amounts on their dates.
How do I calculate a stock’s return on StockTitan?
Open the stock return calculator and pick a stock, an amount and a start date. It shows the price return on split-adjusted closes and the return with dividends reinvested where the dividend records cover the dates. It also shows the same amount in SPY, a fund that tracks the S&P 500.
Sources
- StockTitan stock return calculator
- StockTitan stock return calculator, Altria
- StockTitan DCA calculator
- StockTitan, split-adjusted vs raw stock prices
- StockTitan, CAGR explained
- StockTitan, dividend yield vs total return
- Netflix announces ten-for-one stock split, October 30, 2025
- Altria increases quarterly dividend to $1.06 per share, August 21, 2025
- Altria declares regular quarterly dividend of $1.06 per share, December 10, 2025
- Altria Form 10-K for 2016
- Altria Form 10-K for 2020
- Altria Form 10-K for 2025
- Verizon dividend history
- Intel dividends and buybacks
- Microsoft, XIRR function
- IRS Publication 550, Investment Income and Expenses
- IRS Tax Topic 404, Dividends
The information provided in this article is for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice, investment recommendation, or an endorsement of any particular investment strategy. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Investors should conduct their own research and consult with a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.