Atlas Brown Inc. Purchases 42 Shares of Visa Inc. (NYSE:V)

Atlas Brown Inc. lifted its position in Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) by 0.8% in the 4th quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 5,288 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock after acquiring an additional 42 shares during the quarter. Atlas Brown Inc.’s holdings in Visa were worth $1,671,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Other large investors have also recently made changes to their positions in the company. State Street Corp grew its stake 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 worth $21,064,179,000 after acquiring an additional 3,327,977 shares in the last quarter. FMR LLC boosted its position in Visa by 6.1% during the third 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 in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its holdings in shares of 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 valued at $10,601,135,000 after buying an additional 2,772,549 shares in the last quarter. Ameriprise Financial Inc. grew its position in shares of Visa by 2.4% in the 2nd quarter. Ameriprise Financial Inc. now owns 14,610,590 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $3,833,981,000 after buying an additional 345,829 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Legal & General Group Plc raised its stake in shares of Visa by 2.2% during the 2nd quarter. Legal & General Group Plc now owns 14,416,394 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $3,783,857,000 after acquiring an additional 312,286 shares in the last quarter. 82.15% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities research analysts have weighed in on the stock. BMO Capital Markets raised their target price on shares of Visa from $310.00 to $320.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. Jefferies Financial Group upped their target price on Visa from $320.00 to $330.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, October 30th. Mizuho boosted their price target on Visa from $279.00 to $292.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research note on Friday, November 1st. Royal Bank of Canada increased their price objective on shares of Visa from $311.00 to $322.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, October 30th. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group restated a “buy” rating and set a $317.00 price target on shares of Visa in a research note on Thursday, September 12th. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-four have issued a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $330.85.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In related news, CEO Ryan Mcinerney sold 8,620 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, January 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $317.78, for a total transaction of $2,739,263.60. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, insider Paul D. Fabara sold 2,171 shares of Visa stock in a transaction that occurred 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 completion of the transaction, the insider now owns 17,894 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $5,510,815.18. This represents a 10.82 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Corporate insiders own 0.13% of the company’s stock.

Visa Price Performance

V traded down $5.49 during trading on Friday, hitting $307.11. The company’s stock had a trading volume of 4,480,400 shares, compared to its average volume of 5,059,634. The business’s fifty day simple moving average is $311.80 and its 200 day simple moving average is $286.63. Visa Inc. has a twelve month low of $252.70 and a twelve month high of $321.61. The firm has a market capitalization of $572.11 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 31.56, a P/E/G ratio of 2.11 and a beta of 0.96. The company has a current ratio of 1.28, a quick ratio of 1.28 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.55.

Visa (NYSE:V) last issued its quarterly 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 firm had revenue of $9.62 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $9.49 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $2.33 earnings per share. The business’s revenue was up 11.7% on a year-over-year basis. On average, equities research analysts forecast 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. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, November 12th were paid a dividend of $0.59 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Tuesday, November 12th. This represents a $2.36 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.77%. This is a positive change from Visa’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.52. Visa’s payout ratio is 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.