Visa (NYSE:V) Given “Outperform” Rating at William Blair

William Blair reiterated their outperform rating on shares of Visa (NYSE:V) in a research note issued to investors on Wednesday, RTT News reports.

Several other equities analysts have also recently weighed in on the stock. Raymond James raised their target price on shares of Visa from $287.00 to $311.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a research note on Friday, January 26th. Oppenheimer increased their price objective on shares of Visa from $297.00 to $299.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a research report on Wednesday. Barclays increased their price objective on shares of Visa from $304.00 to $319.00 and gave the company an overweight rating in a research report on Monday, January 29th. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods increased their price objective on shares of Visa from $305.00 to $315.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a research report on Friday, January 26th. Finally, KeyCorp increased their price objective on shares of Visa from $275.00 to $300.00 and gave the company an overweight rating in a research report on Monday, January 8th. Five analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and twenty have issued a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock currently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $302.58.

Visa Stock Performance

V opened at $275.04 on Wednesday. The stock has a market capitalization of $505.11 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 30.73, a PEG ratio of 1.89 and a beta of 0.96. The company has a fifty day moving average of $279.44 and a 200 day moving average of $263.97. Visa has a fifty-two week low of $216.14 and a fifty-two week high of $290.96. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.54, a quick ratio of 1.45 and a current ratio of 1.45.

Visa (NYSE:V) last posted its earnings results on Tuesday, April 23rd. The credit-card processor reported $2.51 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.43 by $0.08. The company had revenue of $8.78 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $8.62 billion. Visa had a net margin of 53.87% and a return on equity of 51.72%. Visa’s quarterly revenue was up 9.9% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the company posted $2.09 earnings per share. As a group, sell-side analysts forecast that Visa will post 9.88 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Visa Announces Dividend

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, June 3rd. Shareholders of record on Friday, May 17th will be given a dividend of $0.52 per share. This represents a $2.08 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.76%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, May 16th. Visa’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 23.24%.

Insider Buying and Selling at Visa

In other Visa news, CEO Ryan Mcinerney sold 8,200 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, April 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $280.36, for a total transaction of $2,298,952.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 538 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $150,833.68. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. In other news, CAO Peter M. Andreski sold 2,615 shares of Visa stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, February 7th. The shares were sold at an average price of $278.88, for a total value of $729,271.20. Following the transaction, the chief accounting officer now owns 4,898 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,365,954.24. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. Also, CEO Ryan Mcinerney sold 8,200 shares of Visa stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, April 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $280.36, for a total transaction of $2,298,952.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 538 shares in the company, valued at approximately $150,833.68. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last quarter, insiders have sold 18,965 shares of company stock valued at $5,256,352. Company insiders own 0.19% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the company. FMR LLC grew its position in shares of Visa by 4.7% in the 3rd quarter. FMR LLC now owns 50,357,747 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $11,582,785,000 after buying an additional 2,257,605 shares during the last quarter. Capital International Investors grew its position in Visa by 2.7% during the 4th quarter. Capital International Investors now owns 22,943,773 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $5,973,432,000 after purchasing an additional 596,950 shares during the last quarter. Capital World Investors grew its position in Visa by 8.0% during the 4th quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 17,895,788 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $4,659,169,000 after purchasing an additional 1,323,238 shares during the last quarter. Northern Trust Corp grew its position in Visa by 4.7% during the 3rd quarter. Northern Trust Corp now owns 17,073,700 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $3,927,122,000 after purchasing an additional 763,505 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Norges Bank purchased a new stake in Visa during the 4th quarter worth approximately $3,895,015,000. Hedge funds and other 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.