Citigroup Forecasts Strong Price Appreciation for Visa (NYSE:V) Stock

Visa (NYSE:V) had its target price upped by Citigroup from $326.00 to $354.00 in a research report report published on Tuesday morning,Benzinga reports. They currently have a buy rating on the credit-card processor’s stock.

Several other research firms also recently issued reports on V. Piper Sandler raised their price target on shares of Visa from $319.00 to $322.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. Morgan Stanley upped their price target on Visa from $326.00 to $371.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Wednesday, December 18th. Mizuho lifted their price objective on Visa from $279.00 to $292.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research note on Friday, November 1st. Robert W. Baird upped their target price on Visa from $330.00 to $340.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 30th. Finally, Barclays raised their price target on shares of Visa from $319.00 to $347.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a report on Monday, November 4th. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-four have assigned a buy rating and two have assigned a strong buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, Visa has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $331.92.

Visa Trading Up 0.3 %

NYSE V opened at $317.10 on Tuesday. The company has a market cap of $590.71 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 32.59, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.06 and a beta of 0.96. Visa has a twelve month low of $252.70 and a twelve month high of $321.61. The company has a quick ratio of 1.28, a current ratio of 1.28 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.55. The business’s fifty day moving average is $312.94 and its 200 day moving average is $287.85.

Visa (NYSE:V) last released its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 29th. The credit-card processor reported $2.71 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $2.58 by $0.13. Visa had a return on equity of 53.16% and a net margin of 54.96%. The company had revenue of $9.62 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $9.49 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the business posted $2.33 earnings per share. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 11.7% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that Visa will post 11.22 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Visa Increases Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, December 2nd. Stockholders of record on Tuesday, November 12th were given a dividend of $0.59 per share. This is a positive change from Visa’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.52. This represents a $2.36 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.74%. The ex-dividend date was Tuesday, November 12th. Visa’s payout ratio is 24.25%.

Insider Transactions at Visa

In other news, CEO Ryan Mcinerney sold 8,620 shares of the 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 SEC, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, insider Paul D. Fabara sold 2,171 shares of Visa stock in a transaction on Friday, November 22nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $307.97, for a total transaction of $668,602.87. Following the sale, the insider now directly owns 17,894 shares of the company’s stock, 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. Insiders own 0.13% of the company’s stock.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Visa

Institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the company. International Assets Investment Management LLC grew its position in Visa by 45,189.4% during the third 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 acquiring an additional 9,736,958 shares during the last quarter. SG Americas Securities LLC boosted its stake in shares of Visa by 4,412.3% in the 3rd 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 boosted its stake in shares of 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 purchasing an additional 3,327,977 shares in the last quarter. FMR LLC grew its holdings in shares of Visa by 6.1% during the 3rd quarter. FMR LLC now owns 57,111,843 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $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 Visa by 7.7% in 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 during the period. 82.15% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

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.