Pinnacle Associates Ltd. Increases Stake in Visa Inc. (NYSE:V)

Pinnacle Associates Ltd. boosted its position in shares of Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) by 1.8% during the 3rd quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The fund owned 210,789 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock after purchasing an additional 3,764 shares during the quarter. Visa comprises about 0.9% of Pinnacle Associates Ltd.’s holdings, making the stock its 22nd biggest holding. Pinnacle Associates Ltd.’s holdings in Visa were worth $54,879,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other institutional investors also recently bought and sold shares of V. WFA Asset Management Corp boosted its holdings in shares of Visa by 4.6% during the 1st quarter. WFA Asset Management Corp now owns 2,263 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $632,000 after acquiring an additional 100 shares during the last quarter. Cornerstone Wealth Management LLC lifted its stake in shares of Visa by 2.1% in the 1st quarter. Cornerstone Wealth Management LLC now owns 11,176 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $3,119,000 after purchasing an additional 229 shares during the period. First Trust Direct Indexing L.P. lifted its stake in shares of Visa by 7.5% in the 1st quarter. First Trust Direct Indexing L.P. now owns 39,308 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $10,970,000 after purchasing an additional 2,736 shares during the period. Accel Wealth Management lifted its stake in shares of Visa by 12.5% in the 1st quarter. Accel Wealth Management now owns 901 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $252,000 after purchasing an additional 100 shares during the period. Finally, RBA Wealth Management LLC lifted its stake in shares of Visa by 0.6% in the 1st quarter. RBA Wealth Management LLC now owns 21,599 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $6,028,000 after purchasing an additional 134 shares during the period. 82.15% of the stock is 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 on Tuesday, September 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $276.37, for a total transaction of $2,382,309.40. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 538 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $148,687.06. The trade was a 0.00 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. 0.19% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

V has been the topic of several recent research reports. Royal Bank of Canada increased their price objective on shares of Visa from $311.00 to $322.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Wednesday. BNP Paribas upgraded shares of Visa from a “neutral” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $325.00 price objective on the stock in a research note on Tuesday, September 3rd. Morgan Stanley raised their target price on shares of Visa from $322.00 to $326.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Wednesday. Jefferies Financial Group raised their target price on shares of Visa from $320.00 to $330.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday. Finally, StockNews.com upgraded shares of Visa from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, August 9th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-four have given a buy rating and two have given a strong buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, Visa currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $320.07.

Visa Trading Down 0.1 %

V stock opened at $289.89 on Friday. The firm has a fifty day moving average price of $280.53 and a 200 day moving average price of $273.50. Visa Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $232.99 and a fifty-two week high of $296.34. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.55, a quick ratio of 1.37 and a current ratio of 1.28. The firm has a market cap of $528.27 billion, a PE ratio of 29.79, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.00 and a beta of 0.96.

Visa (NYSE:V) last posted its quarterly earnings data 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. The company had revenue of $9.62 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $9.49 billion. Visa had a net margin of 54.96% and a return on equity of 53.16%. Visa’s quarterly revenue was up 11.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned $2.33 earnings per share. Sell-side analysts anticipate that Visa Inc. will post 11.12 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Visa Increases Dividend

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, December 2nd. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, November 12th will be paid a dividend of $0.59 per share. This represents a $2.36 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.81%. This is a positive change from Visa’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.52. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, November 12th. Visa’s payout ratio is presently 21.38%.

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.