Visa (NYSE:V) Reaches New 12-Month High Following Analyst Upgrade

Visa Inc. (NYSE:V)’s stock price hit a new 52-week high during mid-day trading on Wednesday after Oppenheimer raised their price target on the stock from $321.00 to $375.00. Oppenheimer currently has an outperform rating on the stock. Visa traded as high as $319.49 and last traded at $318.86, with a volume of 291625 shares trading hands. The stock had previously closed at $318.30.

A number of other equities research analysts also recently issued reports on V. Robert W. Baird boosted their price target on shares of Visa from $330.00 to $340.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. Macquarie boosted their target price on Visa from $300.00 to $335.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, October 30th. Mizuho raised their price target on Visa from $279.00 to $292.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Friday, November 1st. Piper Sandler lifted their price objective on Visa from $319.00 to $322.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group reissued a “buy” rating and set a $317.00 target price on shares of Visa in a research note on Thursday, September 12th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-five have given a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Visa presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $328.41.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, insider Paul D. Fabara sold 2,171 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, November 22nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $307.97, for a total transaction of $668,602.87. Following the transaction, the insider now directly owns 17,894 shares in the company, valued at $5,510,815.18. The trade was a 10.82 % 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 currently owned by insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several large investors have recently bought and sold shares of the business. Arjuna Capital grew its stake in Visa by 0.8% in the 2nd quarter. Arjuna Capital now owns 11,851 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $3,111,000 after acquiring an additional 96 shares during the last quarter. Custom Index Systems LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Visa during the 3rd quarter worth about $731,000. Copley Financial Group Inc. purchased a new stake in shares of Visa during the third quarter worth about $616,000. FORA Capital LLC acquired a new position in shares of Visa in the third quarter valued at approximately $7,987,000. Finally, Chicago Capital LLC lifted its stake in shares of Visa by 5.2% during the third quarter. Chicago Capital LLC now owns 404,914 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $111,331,000 after buying an additional 20,023 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 82.15% of the company’s stock.

Visa Stock Performance

The stock’s 50-day moving average is $302.41 and its 200-day moving average is $282.21. 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 stock has a market cap of $586.58 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 32.36, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.11 and a beta of 0.96.

Visa (NYSE:V) last released its earnings results on Tuesday, October 29th. The credit-card processor reported $2.71 EPS for the quarter, beating 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 firm had revenue of $9.62 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $9.49 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the firm posted $2.33 earnings per share. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 11.7% compared to the same quarter last year. Analysts anticipate that Visa Inc. will post 11.23 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Visa Increases Dividend

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, December 2nd. Stockholders of record on Tuesday, November 12th were issued 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 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.75%. The ex-dividend date was Tuesday, November 12th. Visa’s dividend payout ratio is presently 24.25%.

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.