Visa (NYSE:V) Trading 0.1% Higher After Analyst Upgrade

Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) shares were up 0.1% during mid-day trading on Thursday after Robert W. Baird raised their price target on the stock from $314.00 to $320.00. Robert W. Baird currently has an outperform rating on the stock. Visa traded as high as $273.15 and last traded at $272.97. Approximately 722,605 shares traded hands during trading, a decline of 87% from the average daily volume of 5,733,616 shares. The stock had previously closed at $272.69.

Several other analysts have also recently weighed in on V. William Blair reaffirmed an “outperform” rating on shares of Visa in a report on Friday, January 26th. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods raised their price objective on shares of Visa from $305.00 to $315.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a report on Friday, January 26th. Wells Fargo & Company raised their price objective on shares of Visa from $300.00 to $325.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a report on Wednesday, March 6th. Royal Bank of Canada raised their price objective on shares of Visa from $290.00 to $309.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a report on Friday, January 26th. Finally, Susquehanna raised their price objective on shares of Visa from $300.00 to $326.00 and gave the stock a “positive” rating in a report on Friday, January 26th. Five equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and nineteen have given a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, Visa currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $298.43.

Insider Buying and Selling at Visa

In other Visa news, CEO Ryan Mcinerney sold 8,200 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, April 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $280.36, for a total value of $2,298,952.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 538 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $150,833.68. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. In other news, CEO Ryan Mcinerney sold 8,200 shares of Visa stock in a transaction on Monday, April 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $280.36, for a total transaction of $2,298,952.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 538 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $150,833.68. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, CAO Peter M. Andreski sold 2,615 shares of Visa stock in a transaction on Wednesday, February 7th. The stock was sold at an average price of $278.88, for a total value of $729,271.20. Following the transaction, the chief accounting officer now directly owns 4,898 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,365,954.24. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last quarter, insiders sold 18,965 shares of company stock valued at $5,256,352. 0.19% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Vanguard Group Inc. raised its stake in Visa by 0.3% in the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 141,413,922 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $36,817,115,000 after purchasing an additional 361,254 shares during the last quarter. State Street Corp grew its holdings in Visa by 3.7% in the 1st quarter. State Street Corp now owns 72,897,112 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $16,435,339,000 after buying an additional 2,572,159 shares during the period. Morgan Stanley grew its holdings in Visa by 13.0% in the 4th quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 51,122,866 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $10,621,287,000 after buying an additional 5,864,340 shares during the period. FMR LLC grew its holdings in Visa by 4.7% in the 3rd quarter. FMR LLC now owns 50,357,747 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $11,582,785,000 after buying an additional 2,257,605 shares during the period. Finally, Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC grew its holdings in Visa by 116,608.6% in the 4th quarter. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC now owns 24,504,130 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $5,090,978,000 after buying an additional 24,483,134 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 82.15% of the company’s stock.

Visa Stock Down 0.6 %

The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.54, a quick ratio of 1.45 and a current ratio of 1.45. The company has a market cap of $495.33 billion, a PE ratio of 31.04, a PEG ratio of 1.88 and a beta of 0.96. The firm has a fifty day simple moving average of $279.58 and a 200 day simple moving average of $262.89.

Visa (NYSE:V) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, January 25th. The credit-card processor reported $2.41 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.34 by $0.07. The company had revenue of $8.63 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $8.55 billion. Visa had a return on equity of 50.02% and a net margin of 53.92%. The firm’s revenue was up 9.3% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $2.18 EPS. Equities research analysts predict that Visa Inc. will post 9.88 EPS for the current year.

Visa Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, March 1st. Investors of record on Friday, February 9th were given a dividend of $0.52 per share. This represents a $2.08 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.77%. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, February 8th. Visa’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 23.94%.

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.