Visa (NYSE:V) Rating Reiterated by Morgan Stanley

Visa (NYSE:V)‘s stock had its “overweight” rating restated by equities researchers at Morgan Stanley in a research report issued to clients and investors on Wednesday, Benzinga reports. They currently have a $322.00 price target on the credit-card processor’s stock. Morgan Stanley’s price target would indicate a potential upside of 19.10% from the stock’s current price.

V has been the topic of several other research reports. Citigroup dropped their target price on Visa from $321.00 to $319.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, July 24th. Monness Crespi & Hardt reiterated a “neutral” rating on shares of Visa in a research report on Tuesday. TD Cowen dropped their target price on Visa from $320.00 to $318.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, July 24th. Compass Point assumed coverage on Visa in a research report on Wednesday, September 4th. They set a “buy” rating and a $319.00 target price on the stock. Finally, William Blair upgraded Visa to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, July 23rd. Six equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-four have assigned a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $310.22.

Visa Stock Performance

Shares of Visa stock traded down $2.43 on Wednesday, hitting $270.35. The stock had a trading volume of 3,214,147 shares, compared to its average volume of 7,213,152. Visa has a 52-week low of $227.78 and a 52-week high of $293.07. The company has a current ratio of 1.37, a quick ratio of 1.37 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.54. The stock has a market cap of $492.66 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 30.21, a P/E/G ratio of 2.04 and a beta of 0.96. The company’s 50 day moving average price is $271.12 and its 200 day moving average price is $273.42.

Visa (NYSE:V) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, July 23rd. The credit-card processor reported $2.42 EPS for the quarter, meeting the consensus estimate of $2.42. The firm had revenue of $8.90 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $8.92 billion. Visa had a return on equity of 51.94% and a net margin of 54.72%. The firm’s revenue was up 9.6% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the business earned $2.16 EPS. On average, research analysts anticipate that Visa will post 9.92 EPS for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, CEO Ryan Mcinerney sold 8,620 shares of the stock in a transaction on Tuesday, September 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $276.37, for a total value of $2,382,309.40. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 538 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $148,687.06. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Corporate insiders own 0.19% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. National Bank of Canada FI grew its stake in shares of Visa by 787.1% during the first quarter. National Bank of Canada FI now owns 4,619,881 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $1,296,820,000 after acquiring an additional 4,099,122 shares in the last quarter. Swedbank AB acquired a new stake in shares of Visa during the first quarter valued at about $511,321,000. GQG Partners LLC grew its stake in shares of Visa by 40.1% during the first quarter. GQG Partners LLC now owns 5,990,634 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $1,671,866,000 after acquiring an additional 1,715,686 shares in the last quarter. Wulff Hansen & CO. grew its stake in shares of Visa by 26,951.9% during the second quarter. Wulff Hansen & CO. now owns 1,587,944 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $416,788,000 after acquiring an additional 1,582,074 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Public Employees Retirement Association of Colorado grew its stake in shares of Visa by 14,306.3% during the fourth quarter. Public Employees Retirement Association of Colorado now owns 1,500,270 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $390,595,000 after acquiring an additional 1,489,856 shares in the last quarter. 82.15% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

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.