Visa (NYSE:V) Trading Up 0.7% Following Analyst Upgrade

Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) rose 0.7% during trading on Tuesday after Barclays raised their price target on the stock from $319.00 to $347.00. Barclays currently has an overweight rating on the stock. Visa traded as high as $294.78 and last traded at $294.03. Approximately 1,044,047 shares changed hands during trading, a decline of 85% from the average daily volume of 7,029,482 shares. The stock had previously closed at $291.85.

V has been the subject of a number of other research reports. TD Cowen increased their price objective on Visa from $318.00 to $325.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. Macquarie increased their price target on shares of Visa from $300.00 to $335.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, October 30th. BMO Capital Markets upped their price objective on shares of Visa from $310.00 to $320.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. Citigroup increased their target price on shares of Visa from $319.00 to $326.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 30th. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada upped their price target on Visa from $311.00 to $322.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report 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. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $321.74.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other news, CEO Ryan Mcinerney sold 8,620 shares of Visa stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, September 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $276.37, for a total value of $2,382,309.40. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 538 shares in the company, valued at $148,687.06. The trade was a 0.00 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. 0.19% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Trading of Visa

Several institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of V. International Assets Investment Management LLC raised its holdings in shares of Visa by 45,189.4% during the 3rd quarter. International Assets Investment Management LLC now owns 9,758,505 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $2,683,101,000 after acquiring an additional 9,736,958 shares in the last quarter. SG Americas Securities LLC raised its stake in Visa by 4,412.3% during the third quarter. SG Americas Securities LLC now owns 4,072,467 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $1,119,725,000 after purchasing an additional 4,166,905 shares in the last quarter. National Bank of Canada FI lifted its position in Visa by 787.1% during the first quarter. National Bank of Canada FI now owns 4,619,881 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $1,296,820,000 after purchasing an additional 4,099,122 shares during the last quarter. Swedbank AB purchased a new position in shares of Visa in the 1st quarter worth $511,321,000. Finally, GQG Partners LLC increased its holdings in shares of Visa by 40.1% in the 1st quarter. GQG Partners LLC now owns 5,990,634 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $1,671,866,000 after buying an additional 1,715,686 shares during the last quarter. 82.15% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Visa Price Performance

The company has a current ratio of 1.28, a quick ratio of 1.37 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.55. The firm’s 50-day moving average price is $282.69 and its 200-day moving average price is $274.20. The stock has a market capitalization of $560.11 billion, a PE ratio of 31.59, a PEG ratio of 1.96 and a beta of 0.95.

Visa (NYSE:V) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 29th. The credit-card processor reported $2.71 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.58 by $0.13. The business had revenue of $9.62 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $9.49 billion. Visa had a return on equity of 53.16% and a net margin of 54.96%. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 11.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the business posted $2.33 earnings per share. On average, equities analysts forecast that Visa Inc. will post 11.18 EPS 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 0.77%. This is a positive change from Visa’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.52. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, November 12th. Visa’s payout ratio is presently 21.38%.

Visa Company Profile

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.