Visa (NYSE:V) Stock Price Up 0.4% After Analyst Upgrade

Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) shares were up 0.4% on Thursday after Bank of America raised their price target on the stock from $314.00 to $331.00. Bank of America currently has a neutral rating on the stock. Visa traded as high as $327.08 and last traded at $324.89. Approximately 1,234,812 shares traded hands during trading, a decline of 77% from the average daily volume of 5,356,201 shares. The stock had previously closed at $323.56.

A number of other analysts have also recently weighed in on V. Monness Crespi & Hardt reaffirmed a “neutral” rating on shares of Visa in a report on Tuesday, September 24th. Mizuho boosted their price objective on Visa from $279.00 to $292.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Friday, November 1st. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft raised their price target on Visa from $300.00 to $340.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 30th. TD Cowen boosted their target price on shares of Visa from $318.00 to $325.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 30th. Finally, Citigroup raised their target price on shares of Visa from $326.00 to $354.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, January 14th. Four equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-four have given a buy rating and two have assigned a strong buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $332.81.

Insiders Place Their Bets

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

Institutional Trading of Visa

A number of large investors have recently bought and sold shares of V. State Street Corp raised its holdings in shares of Visa by 4.5% in the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 76,610,942 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $21,064,179,000 after buying an additional 3,327,977 shares during the last quarter. FMR LLC increased its holdings in shares of Visa by 6.1% in the third 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 in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC increased 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 valued at $10,601,135,000 after buying an additional 2,772,549 shares during the period. Ameriprise Financial Inc. raised its holdings in Visa by 2.4% during the 2nd quarter. Ameriprise Financial Inc. now owns 14,610,590 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $3,833,981,000 after purchasing an additional 345,829 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Legal & General Group Plc grew its position in shares of Visa by 2.2% during the 2nd quarter. Legal & General Group Plc now owns 14,416,394 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $3,783,857,000 after buying an additional 312,286 shares during the period. 82.15% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Visa Price Performance

The firm has a market capitalization of $605.43 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 33.40, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.17 and a beta of 0.96. The company has a quick ratio of 1.28, a current ratio of 1.28 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.55. The company’s fifty day moving average is $314.14 and its two-hundred day moving average is $289.71.

Visa (NYSE:V) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 29th. The credit-card processor reported $2.71 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.58 by $0.13. Visa had a return on equity of 53.16% and a net margin of 54.96%. The business had revenue of $9.62 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $9.49 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned $2.33 earnings per share. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 11.7% compared to the same quarter last year. Equities research analysts anticipate that Visa Inc. will post 11.2 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Visa Increases Dividend

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, December 2nd. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, November 12th were paid a $0.59 dividend. This is a boost from Visa’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.52. The ex-dividend date was Tuesday, November 12th. This represents a $2.36 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.73%. Visa’s payout ratio is presently 24.25%.

About Visa

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.