Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) Shares Purchased by Verum Partners LLC

Verum Partners LLC raised its holdings in Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) by 4.0% in the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the SEC. The firm owned 1,622 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock after acquiring an additional 62 shares during the quarter. Verum Partners LLC’s holdings in Visa were worth $513,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

Several other institutional investors also recently made changes to their positions in V. State Street Corp raised its holdings in Visa by 4.5% during the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 76,610,942 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $21,064,179,000 after purchasing an additional 3,327,977 shares during the last quarter. FMR LLC raised its stake 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 worth $15,702,901,000 after buying an additional 3,265,518 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its position 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. Ameriprise Financial Inc. increased 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 valued at $3,833,981,000 after acquiring an additional 345,829 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Legal & General Group Plc raised its position in Visa by 2.2% during the second quarter. Legal & General Group Plc now owns 14,416,394 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $3,783,857,000 after acquiring an additional 312,286 shares during the last quarter. 82.15% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Visa news, CEO Ryan Mcinerney sold 8,620 shares of Visa stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, January 2nd. The stock was 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 link. Also, insider Paul D. Fabara sold 2,171 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on 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 of the company’s stock, 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. 0.13% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several analysts have recently commented on the stock. Morgan Stanley increased their price target on shares of Visa from $326.00 to $371.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Wednesday, December 18th. Oppenheimer boosted their price target on Visa from $321.00 to $375.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a report on Thursday, December 19th. Bank of America increased their price objective on Visa from $314.00 to $331.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Wednesday. Susquehanna boosted their target price on shares of Visa from $339.00 to $375.00 and gave the company a “positive” rating in a research note on Wednesday, December 11th. Finally, Jefferies Financial Group raised their price target on shares of Visa from $320.00 to $330.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-four have assigned a buy rating and two have issued a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $332.81.

Visa Stock Up 1.4 %

Shares of Visa stock opened at $328.18 on Friday. The company has a fifty day moving average price of $314.14 and a 200 day moving average price of $289.71. 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 twelve month low of $252.70 and a twelve month high of $328.51. The stock has a market cap of $611.36 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 33.73, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.17 and a beta of 0.96.

Visa (NYSE:V) last released its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 29th. The credit-card processor reported $2.71 EPS 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 firm had revenue of $9.62 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $9.49 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $2.33 EPS. Visa’s revenue for the quarter was up 11.7% on a year-over-year basis. Equities 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 declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, December 2nd. Investors of record on Tuesday, November 12th were paid a dividend of $0.59 per share. This is an increase from Visa’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.52. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Tuesday, November 12th. This represents a $2.36 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.72%. Visa’s payout ratio is 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.