The Coca-cola company has made many people in my city, Atlanta, very wealthy for a long time. It's been an amazing supporter of so many things in Atlanta, and way beyond. I inherited KO stock a couple decades ago and will never sell it. I recall it was routinely trashed on these boards when it reached 60 bucks a share, calling it a declining company that was then way overvalued. Now it's in the 80s.

Indeed, the share price has done well.

But personally I wouldn't take that as a sign that it's [still] a great firm, I'd take it as a faint suggestion to at least consider whether it's worth selling : ) What has the actual value of a share done for you?
In the last decade the price has gone from $43 to $88 (inflation + 7.4%/year), but earnings per share are up only inflation + 1.5%/year. And this isn't an unusually bad year. Basically, nice returns from getting more expensive.

Since the average period 2010-2012 (average 15 years ago), the share price is up inflation + 4.1%/year. But most of that has been multiple expansion, EPS up only inflation + 0.30%/year.

You certainly get some dividends along the way, but personally I always hope for the intrinsic value of a share to rise in real terms. It's a firm with great longevity, but it isn't really rising in value.

(as an aside, there is no magic of buybacks operating here...on the numbers I have handy, the share count is actually a pinch higher than it was 10 years ago, not lower. There's nothing like giving away hundreds of millions of shares annually in share-based comp to show just what you think about your owners. It is, I agree, making a lot of people in Atlanta wealthier)

Jim