Global Payments (NYSE:GPN) was upgraded by Oppenheimer from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating in a research note issued on Thursday, Analyst Ratings Network reports. The firm currently has a GBX 55 ($0.85) price target on the stock.
The analysts wrote, “Our concern regarding a below-consensus FY14 guide has now passed. More importantly, Canada appears to have stabilized and is poised for modest growth and margin leverage in FY14. Additionally, GPN’s European businesses generally remain healthy, and we believe constant currency volume growth could accelerate in FY14. GPN has $375M (>10% of mkt cap) of share repurchase authorization remaining, of which $250M is not reflected within guidance (>$0.20 accretive to our FY15E). GPN appears highly attractive at 11.5x our CY14E and 8x our CY14E EBITDA estimate.”
A number of other firms have also recently commented on GPN. Analysts at Barclays Capital cut their price target on shares of Global Payments from $51.00 to $49.00 in a research note to investors on Friday, July 26th. They now have an “equal weight” rating on the stock. Separately, analysts at UBS AG downgraded shares of Global Payments from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating in a research note to investors on Friday, July 26th. They now have a $49.00 price target on the stock, down previously from $58.00.
Shares of Global Payments (NYSE:GPN) opened at 46.31 on Thursday. Global Payments has a 52 week low of $39.37 and a 52 week high of $51.24. The stock’s 50-day moving average is currently $47.4. The company has a market cap of $3.493 billion and a P/E ratio of 16.78.
Global Payments (NYSE:GPN) last announced its earnings results on Thursday, July 25th. The company reported $0.98 earnings per share for the quarter, missing the analysts’ consensus estimate of $1.02 by $0.04. The company had revenue of $618.40 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $635.63 million. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $0.97 earnings per share. Global Payments’s revenue was down 8.1% compared to the same quarter last year. Analysts expect that Global Payments will post $3.95 EPS for the current fiscal year.
Global Payments Inc (NYSE:GPN) is a provider of electronic payments transaction processing services for consumers, merchants, independent sales organizations (ISOs), financial institutions, government agencies and multi-national corporations located throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, the Asia-Pacific region, the Czech Republic, and the Russian Federation.
