Visa (NYSE:V) Trading Up 0.4% on Analyst Upgrade

Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) traded 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. 1,234,812 shares were traded during mid-day trading, a decline of 77% from the average session volume of 5,356,201 shares. The stock had previously closed at $323.56.

A number of other brokerages also recently commented on V. Susquehanna increased their price target on shares of Visa from $339.00 to $375.00 and gave the company a “positive” rating in a report on Wednesday, December 11th. Mizuho boosted their target price on Visa from $279.00 to $292.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Friday, November 1st. Seaport Res Ptn upgraded Visa from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, January 14th. Jefferies Financial Group increased their target price on Visa from $320.00 to $330.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. Finally, Oppenheimer raised their target price on shares of Visa from $321.00 to $375.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Thursday, December 19th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-four have assigned a buy rating and two have given a strong buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, Visa has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $332.81.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other Visa news, CEO Ryan Mcinerney sold 8,620 shares of Visa 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 sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, insider Paul D. Fabara sold 2,171 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, November 22nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $307.97, for a total transaction of $668,602.87. Following the sale, the insider now directly owns 17,894 shares in the company, valued at approximately $5,510,815.18. The trade was a 10.82 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. 0.13% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Visa

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the business. Peterson Financial Group Inc. acquired a new position in Visa during the 3rd quarter worth approximately $26,000. Decker Retirement Planning Inc. acquired a new stake in Visa in the fourth quarter valued at $26,000. Reston Wealth Management LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Visa during the 3rd quarter worth $31,000. Modus Advisors LLC acquired a new position in shares of Visa during the 4th quarter worth $32,000. Finally, West Financial Advisors LLC increased its holdings in shares of Visa by 101.4% in the 3rd quarter. West Financial Advisors LLC now owns 145 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $40,000 after purchasing an additional 73 shares in the last quarter. 82.15% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Visa Price Performance

The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.55, a current ratio of 1.28 and a quick ratio of 1.28. The company’s 50 day moving average is $314.14 and its 200 day moving average is $289.71. The stock has a market cap of $605.43 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 33.40, a PEG ratio of 2.17 and a beta of 0.96.

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

Visa Increases Dividend

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