Happy Anniversary! By Stan Sylvester
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Do you realize that
we are having an anniversary this year? It’s true, because we changed from a
mutual insurance
company to a stock company in 1986, 25 years ago.
I remember how
exciting it was to watch PBS’s “Nightly Business News” on November 6, 1986
and see that the
former Union Mutual Insurance Company, renamed Unum and publicly traded for the
first time, had been the
most heavily traded stock that day. My
wife and I both laughed at Paul Kangas, the host of the Nightly Business
News, as he struggled with the name. He questioned: Is it “Oo-num”? Or
“Un-um”? Or is it “Ewe-num”? He
finally settled on the latter, the name with which we as employees had already
started to become familiar.
It was great to
obtain “free” Unum stock as many of us did, having been policyholders of
Union Mutual. My three
small life insurance policies which I had bought through Pete Carpenter led to
my receiving 306 shares at no cost.
I did purchase a few shares otherwise as well as some shares for my wife and my
children.
My real question is:
how well have we fared as stockholders of Unum over these almost-25 years?
I thought I
could answer the question myself by simply looking back at my own records.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t answer
the question since my records are confusing because of my having joined a
Dividend Reinvestment Plan with
purchases of fractions of shares, because of stock splits, because I have
purchased more shares and sold
shares at times, and because I have given some shares as contributions to
charities.
Thus I turned to Rob
Lockerman, Director, Investor Relations, Unum Group, in Chattanooga asking him
what
would be today’s result if one purchased 100 shares of Unum stock on day one
and held it to the present. His
records confirm that the first trading date was November 6, 1986 and the Initial
Offering Price was $25.50 per
share, the total cost (excluding commission) being $2,550 for the 100 shares.
There were 2-for-1 stock splits in
March 1992 and in June 1997, so the original 100 shares would now be 400 shares.
Rob’s research
shows that the original $2,550 investment would be valued at $10,276 on April
15, 2011 and
one would have received cash dividends over the years of $3,664.
But if one reinvested all dividends over that
time, one would, on April 15, own approximately 620 shares with a market value
of $15,922.
So the April 15, 2011
value with cash received would result in a total profit of 447% or with
dividends
reinvested, a profit of 524%.
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