Board of the Pension Protection Fund Buys New Stake in Visa Inc. (NYSE:V)

Board of the Pension Protection Fund bought a new stake in shares of Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) during the 4th quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The firm bought 3,400 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock, valued at approximately $1,075,000. Visa comprises approximately 1.2% of Board of the Pension Protection Fund’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 13th largest holding.

A number of other institutional investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. International Assets Investment Management LLC boosted its holdings in shares of Visa by 45,189.4% in the third quarter. International Assets Investment Management LLC now owns 9,758,505 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $2,683,101,000 after acquiring an additional 9,736,958 shares in the last quarter. SG Americas Securities LLC lifted its position in Visa by 4,412.3% in the third quarter. SG Americas Securities LLC now owns 4,072,467 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $1,119,725,000 after purchasing an additional 4,166,905 shares during the period. State Street Corp boosted its stake in Visa by 4.5% during the 3rd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 76,610,942 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $21,064,179,000 after purchasing an additional 3,327,977 shares in the last quarter. FMR LLC increased its position in shares of Visa by 6.1% during the 3rd quarter. FMR LLC now owns 57,111,843 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $15,702,901,000 after purchasing an additional 3,265,518 shares during the period. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC raised its stake in shares of Visa by 7.7% in the 3rd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 38,655,250 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $10,601,135,000 after buying an additional 2,772,549 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 82.15% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several brokerages recently weighed in on V. Macquarie raised their target price on Visa from $300.00 to $335.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. Citigroup lifted their price objective on shares of Visa from $326.00 to $354.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday. Piper Sandler boosted their target price on shares of Visa from $319.00 to $322.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 30th. Susquehanna raised their target price on shares of Visa from $339.00 to $375.00 and gave the stock a “positive” rating in a report on Wednesday, December 11th. Finally, BMO Capital Markets upped their price target on Visa from $310.00 to $320.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 30th. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-four have issued a buy rating and two have issued a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $331.92.

Visa Trading Up 2.4 %

NYSE V opened at $316.45 on Thursday. The company has a current ratio of 1.28, a quick ratio of 1.28 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.55. Visa Inc. has a 1-year low of $252.70 and a 1-year high of $321.61. The firm’s fifty day simple moving average is $312.76 and its 200-day simple moving average is $287.65. The company has a market capitalization of $589.51 billion, a PE ratio of 32.52, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.11 and a beta of 0.96.

Visa (NYSE:V) last issued its earnings results on Tuesday, October 29th. The credit-card processor reported $2.71 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $2.58 by $0.13. Visa had a return on equity of 53.16% and a net margin of 54.96%. The company had revenue of $9.62 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $9.49 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the firm posted $2.33 EPS. The business’s revenue was up 11.7% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, sell-side analysts anticipate that Visa Inc. will post 11.23 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Visa Increases Dividend

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, December 2nd. Investors of record on Tuesday, November 12th were given a dividend of $0.59 per share. This represents a $2.36 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.75%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Tuesday, November 12th. This is a positive change from Visa’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.52. Visa’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 24.25%.

Insider Activity at Visa

In other Visa news, CEO Ryan Mcinerney sold 8,620 shares of the stock in a transaction on Thursday, January 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $317.78, for a total transaction of $2,739,263.60. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, insider Paul D. Fabara sold 2,171 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, November 22nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $307.97, for a total value of $668,602.87. Following the transaction, the insider now owns 17,894 shares in the company, valued at approximately $5,510,815.18. This trade represents a 10.82 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders own 0.13% of the company’s stock.

Visa Company Profile

Visa Inc operates as a payment technology company in the United States and internationally. The company operates VisaNet, a transaction processing network that enables authorization, clearing, and settlement of payment transactions. It also offers credit, debit, and prepaid card products; tap to pay, tokenization, and click to pay services; Visa Direct, a solution that facilitates the delivery of funds to eligible cards, deposit accounts, and digital wallets; Visa B2B Connect, a multilateral business-to-business cross-border payments network; Visa Cross-Border Solution, a cross-border consumer payments solution; and Visa DPS that provides a range of value-added services, including fraud mitigation, dispute management, data analytics, campaign management, a suite of digital solutions, and contact center services.