Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) Sees Significant Decrease in Short Interest

Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) was the recipient of a large drop in short interest in January. As of January 15th, there was short interest totalling 26,370,000 shares, a drop of 12.9% from the December 31st total of 30,260,000 shares. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 5,970,000 shares, the short-interest ratio is currently 4.4 days.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several equities analysts have recently weighed in on the stock. Robert W. Baird raised their price target on shares of Visa from $330.00 to $340.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. Mizuho raised their target price on shares of Visa from $279.00 to $292.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research note on Friday, November 1st. TD Cowen upped their price target on Visa from $318.00 to $325.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, October 30th. BMO Capital Markets lifted their price objective on Visa from $310.00 to $320.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, October 30th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. upped their target price on Visa from $340.00 to $375.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Friday. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-five have issued a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $352.27.

Visa Stock Performance

Shares of Visa stock opened at $342.05 on Friday. The stock has a market capitalization of $637.19 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 35.15, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.27 and a beta of 0.96. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.55, a current ratio of 1.28 and a quick ratio of 1.28. The business has a 50-day moving average of $317.74 and a 200 day moving average of $292.96. Visa has a 12 month low of $252.70 and a 12 month high of $351.25.

Visa (NYSE:V) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, January 30th. The credit-card processor reported $2.75 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.66 by $0.09. Visa had a net margin of 54.96% and a return on equity of 53.16%. As a group, sell-side analysts forecast that Visa will post 11.18 earnings per share for the current year.

Visa Dividend Announcement

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, March 3rd. Stockholders of record on Tuesday, February 11th will be given a dividend of $0.59 per share. This represents a $2.36 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.69%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, February 11th. Visa’s dividend payout ratio is currently 24.25%.

Insider Activity

In related news, CEO Ryan Mcinerney sold 8,620 shares of the business’s 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 sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, insider Paul D. Fabara sold 2,171 shares of the stock in a transaction 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 completion of the transaction, the insider now directly owns 17,894 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $5,510,815.18. This represents a 10.82 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders own 0.13% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Trading of Visa

Several hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of V. International Assets Investment Management LLC increased its holdings in 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 purchasing an additional 9,736,958 shares during the period. SG Americas Securities LLC increased its stake in shares of 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 worth $1,119,725,000 after buying an additional 4,166,905 shares during the period. State Street Corp raised its holdings in Visa by 4.5% in the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 76,610,942 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $21,064,179,000 after acquiring an additional 3,327,977 shares in the last quarter. FMR LLC lifted its stake in Visa by 6.1% in the third quarter. FMR LLC now owns 57,111,843 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $15,702,901,000 after acquiring an additional 3,265,518 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC grew its holdings in Visa by 7.7% during 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 acquiring an additional 2,772,549 shares in the last quarter. 82.15% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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.