Visa (NYSE:V) Trading 0.4% Higher – Time to Buy?

Visa Inc. (NYSE:V)’s stock price rose 0.4% during trading on Tuesday . The stock traded as high as $317.54 and last traded at $317.19. Approximately 1,941,947 shares were traded during mid-day trading, a decline of 72% from the average daily volume of 6,861,843 shares. The stock had previously closed at $315.89.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of research analysts recently commented on V shares. BNP Paribas raised shares of Visa from a “neutral” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $325.00 price objective on the stock in a research report on Tuesday, September 3rd. Robert W. Baird boosted their target price on Visa from $330.00 to $340.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. Barclays raised their price target on Visa from $319.00 to $347.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Monday, November 4th. Jefferies Financial Group increased their price objective on Visa from $320.00 to $330.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 30th. Finally, Compass Point started coverage on shares of Visa in a research report on Wednesday, September 4th. They issued a “buy” rating and a $319.00 target price for the company. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-five have issued a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $324.74.

Visa Stock Performance

The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.55, a quick ratio of 1.28 and a current ratio of 1.28. The company has a market cap of $590.92 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 32.60, a PEG ratio of 2.11 and a beta of 0.96. The firm’s 50-day moving average price is $300.14 and its 200 day moving average price is $281.46.

Visa (NYSE:V) last released its earnings results on Tuesday, October 29th. The credit-card processor reported $2.71 earnings per share 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 return on equity of 53.16% and a net margin of 54.96%. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 11.7% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm posted $2.33 earnings per share. On average, sell-side analysts anticipate that Visa Inc. will post 11.23 EPS for the current year.

Visa Increases Dividend

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, December 2nd. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, November 12th were issued a dividend of $0.59 per share. This is an increase from Visa’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.52. This represents a $2.36 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.74%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Tuesday, November 12th. Visa’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 24.25%.

Insider Buying and Selling at Visa

In related news, insider Paul D. Fabara sold 2,171 shares of Visa stock in a transaction dated Friday, November 22nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $307.97, for a total value of $668,602.87. Following the sale, the insider now owns 17,894 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $5,510,815.18. The trade was a 10.82 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Company insiders own 0.19% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Trading of Visa

Several institutional investors and hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of V. State Street Corp grew its holdings in Visa by 4.5% in 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 raised its stake in Visa by 6.1% in the 3rd 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 in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC grew 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 worth $10,601,135,000 after purchasing an additional 2,772,549 shares in the last quarter. Ameriprise Financial Inc. increased its holdings in shares of Visa by 2.4% during the second quarter. Ameriprise Financial Inc. now owns 14,610,590 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $3,833,981,000 after purchasing an additional 345,829 shares during the period. Finally, Legal & General Group Plc raised its position in shares of Visa by 2.2% in the second quarter. Legal & General Group Plc now owns 14,416,394 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $3,783,857,000 after buying an additional 312,286 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 82.15% of the company’s stock.

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.