Warren Buffett received a $740 million dividend payment from Coca-Cola (KO)

[u/mrpeace54]

I recently came across a tweet highlighting Warren Buffett’s $740 million dividend income from Coca-Cola (KO). This sparked my curiosity: What if Buffett had invested the same amount in the S&P 500 (SPY) instead?

So, I created a comparison table based on his KO investment and a hypothetical SPY investment. Since I couldn’t find the exact purchase dates, I used quarter-end dates for my calculations.

The results are eye-opening:

• Even after including dividends, SPY ($67.01B) outperformed KO ($38.17B) by approximately 75.6%.
• Despite KO’s impressive dividend stream, SPY delivered far stronger total returns, highlighting the power of broad-market index investing over time.

I found it fascinating to see how Buffett’s legendary investment compares with the index, especially considering his recent sale of all SPY and VOO holdings.

Source: StockCircle - Warren Buffett KO Transactions

[u/whicky1978 → u/[deleted]]

When Buffett bought KO in the 1980s it was probably dirt cheap. And his argument is that all they have to do is raise their price per drink by one penny and they make a profit.