Visa (NYSE:V) Trading Down 0.2% – What’s Next?

Visa Inc. (NYSE:V)’s share price dropped 0.2% during trading on Thursday . The company traded as low as $319.46 and last traded at $320.10. Approximately 621,909 shares were traded during trading, a decline of 91% from the average daily volume of 6,943,806 shares. The stock had previously closed at $320.65.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several brokerages recently weighed in on V. Morgan Stanley increased their price target on shares of Visa from $326.00 to $371.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a report on Wednesday, December 18th. Barclays boosted their target price on shares of Visa from $319.00 to $347.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Monday, November 4th. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods increased their price target on Visa from $335.00 to $360.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Monday, December 9th. Jefferies Financial Group boosted 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. Finally, Mizuho raised their target price on Visa from $279.00 to $292.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Friday, November 1st. Four analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-five have assigned a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $328.41.

Visa Stock Performance

The stock has a market cap of $597.72 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 32.98, a PEG 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. The firm has a fifty day moving average of $305.43 and a 200 day moving average of $283.51.

Visa (NYSE:V) last issued its earnings results on Tuesday, October 29th. The credit-card processor reported $2.71 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.58 by $0.13. Visa had a return on equity of 53.16% and a net margin of 54.96%. The business had revenue of $9.62 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $9.49 billion. During the same period last year, the company earned $2.33 EPS. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 11.7% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, sell-side analysts forecast that Visa Inc. will post 11.23 EPS for the current 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 represents a $2.36 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.74%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Tuesday, November 12th. This is a positive change from Visa’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.52. Visa’s payout ratio is presently 24.25%.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other Visa news, insider Paul D. Fabara sold 2,171 shares of Visa 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 completion of the sale, the insider now directly owns 17,894 shares in the company, valued at $5,510,815.18. This trade represents a 10.82 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. 0.13% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Institutional Trading of Visa

Several hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in V. Peterson Financial Group Inc. acquired a new stake in Visa during the 3rd quarter worth approximately $26,000. Reston Wealth Management LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Visa during the third quarter worth $31,000. Fairway Wealth LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Visa in the second quarter valued at $39,000. West Financial Advisors LLC boosted its holdings in Visa by 101.4% in the third quarter. West Financial Advisors LLC now owns 145 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $40,000 after purchasing an additional 73 shares during the period. Finally, Ridgewood Investments LLC acquired a new position in Visa during the 2nd quarter worth $48,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds 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.