Stock return

Here's the bottom line of stock investment. How do you make profit off the stocks?
There are basically two ways. One: Through the dividends. Second: Through the capital appreciation.
When you own a share of stock, you are partial owner of the company and you might share some of the company's profits in form of dividend. Companies report their earnings every quarters and decide whether to pay a dividends or not. Small companies, which is still growing, would not pay dividends most likely. Instead, they will use the retained earning to keep the company grow via investing in project, buying more equipments, hiring more skilled workers, etc. Bigger companies, which are more financially stable and have less room to grow, will return some of their profits back to investors in dividends. To receive a dividend, you must own the stock by the ex-dividend date, which is four business days before the company looks at the list of shareholders to see who gets the dividends. Note that most publications report a company's annual dividend, not the quarterly. In addition to dividend, investor profits off the capital appreciation. The capital appreciation is profit that you earn after buying stock and selling it at a higher price. Buy low and sell high is a basic paradigm of stock investment but buy high and sell higher is as legitimate.
So the total return of stock investment would be, (P1-P0+D1)/P0.
P1 is selling price of stock whereas P0 is purchasing price and D1 is the dividend you received.
If dividend has not paid, then total return would be simply, (P1-P0)/P0.
For instance,

Ending Price = 24
Beginning Price = 20
Dividend = 1

HPR = ( 24 - 20 + 1 )/ ( 20) = 25%