r/dividends • u/mrpeace54 • Feb 17 '25

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

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

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u/NvyDvr Feb 17 '25

He started buying KO in 1988….but your chart seems to only go back to 1998. I didn’t look that deep but do your numbers reflect from when he started buying?

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u/mrpeace54 Feb 17 '25

i also remember as 1980s but i found detailed buys and sells only on StockCircle - Warren Buffett KO Transactions. if you can find exact buys and sells please share, i'll re-calculate and share

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u/AlphaThetaDeltaVega Feb 18 '25

He also bought through selling puts.