Why Worry With Dividends? Their Five-Year Reinvested Value for John Bean Technologies In a world obsessed with price movements of stocks, it''s easy to lose sight of what those prices represent -- the value of holding a company''s future profit potential. One of the key ways that profit potential turns into profit actualization in an investor''s pocket is the dividend -- cash (usually) payments made to stockholders representing a portion of a company''s retained earnings. Retained earnings is found under the shareholder''s equity portion of the balance sheet and represents the amount of earnings a company has left over after paying dividends to its shareholders. Before further discussion of why dividends can be impactful in the long-term, here''s a plot showing how much of a difference reinvested dividends would make in one''s five year holdings of NYSE:JBT compared to holding the dividends as cash and regular price appreciation. The following plot shows three values over a five-year period: 1) The value of a $100 investment in JBT, with only price appreciation. 2) The Full story available on Benzinga.