Citigroup Issues Positive Forecast for Visa (NYSE:V) Stock Price

Visa (NYSE:V) had its price objective hoisted by investment analysts at Citigroup from $326.00 to $354.00 in a report released on Tuesday,Benzinga reports. The brokerage currently has a “buy” rating on the credit-card processor’s stock. Citigroup’s price objective indicates a potential upside of 14.32% from the stock’s current price.

Other analysts have also recently issued research reports about the stock. Monness Crespi & Hardt restated a “neutral” rating on shares of Visa in a research note on Tuesday, September 24th. Jefferies Financial Group upped their price objective on Visa from $320.00 to $330.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 30th. Susquehanna lifted their target price on Visa from $339.00 to $375.00 and gave the stock a “positive” rating in a report on Wednesday, December 11th. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft upped their price target on shares of Visa from $300.00 to $340.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. Finally, Mizuho lifted their price objective 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. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-four have given a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $331.92.

Visa Stock Up 0.9 %

Shares of V traded up $2.75 during midday trading on Tuesday, hitting $309.67. The stock had a trading volume of 2,591,772 shares, compared to its average volume of 5,627,127. The company has a 50 day simple moving average of $312.44 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $287.32. Visa has a twelve month low of $252.70 and a twelve month high of $321.61. The firm has a market cap of $576.88 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 31.83, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.11 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.

Visa (NYSE:V) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 29th. The credit-card processor reported $2.71 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.58 by $0.13. The firm had revenue of $9.62 billion for 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%. The company’s revenue was up 11.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $2.33 EPS. On average, analysts anticipate that Visa will post 11.23 EPS for the current year.

Insider Activity at Visa

In other Visa news, CEO Ryan Mcinerney sold 8,620 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Thursday, January 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $317.78, for a total value of $2,739,263.60. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, insider Paul D. Fabara sold 2,171 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, November 22nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $307.97, for a total transaction of $668,602.87. Following the completion of the sale, the insider now directly owns 17,894 shares in the company, valued at $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. 0.13% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in V. International Assets Investment Management LLC lifted its stake 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 valued at $2,683,101,000 after buying an additional 9,736,958 shares in the last quarter. SG Americas Securities LLC grew its position 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 valued at $1,119,725,000 after purchasing an additional 4,166,905 shares in the last quarter. State Street Corp grew its holdings in Visa by 4.5% during the 3rd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 76,610,942 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $21,064,179,000 after buying an additional 3,327,977 shares in the last quarter. FMR LLC increased its position 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 purchasing an additional 3,265,518 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC raised its position in shares of 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 valued at $10,601,135,000 after buying an additional 2,772,549 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 82.15% of the company’s stock.

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.