StockNews.com Downgrades Visa (NYSE:V) to Hold

Visa (NYSE:V) was downgraded by stock analysts at StockNews.com from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report issued on Monday.

A number of other equities analysts also recently weighed in on V. William Blair reiterated an “outperform” rating on shares of Visa in a report on Friday, January 31st. Wells Fargo & Company upped their price objective on shares of Visa from $360.00 to $395.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Friday, January 31st. UBS Group lifted their target price on shares of Visa from $350.00 to $400.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, January 31st. Susquehanna reaffirmed a “positive” rating on shares of Visa in a research note on Friday, March 21st. Finally, Raymond James reissued an “outperform” rating and set a $393.00 price objective (up previously from $374.00) on shares of Visa in a research report on Friday, January 31st. Six equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-two have assigned a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, Visa has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $355.84.

Visa Price Performance

V stock opened at $307.92 on Monday. Visa has a one year low of $252.70 and a one year high of $366.54. The firm has a 50-day moving average of $343.47 and a two-hundred day moving average of $317.55. The company has a current ratio of 1.12, a quick ratio of 1.12 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.45. The firm has a market capitalization of $572.04 billion, a PE ratio of 31.04, a P/E/G ratio of 2.33 and a beta of 0.94.

Visa (NYSE:V) last released its earnings results on Thursday, January 30th. The credit-card processor reported $2.75 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.66 by $0.09. Visa had a return on equity of 54.79% and a net margin of 54.27%. On average, analysts forecast that Visa will post 11.3 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Transactions at Visa

In other Visa news, CEO Ryan Mcinerney sold 8,620 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, February 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $340.00, for a total value of $2,930,800.00. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. Also, insider Paul D. Fabara sold 39,350 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, March 19th. The stock was sold at an average price of $340.41, for a total value of $13,395,133.50. Following the completion of the sale, the insider now owns 26,413 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $8,991,249.33. This represents a 59.84 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 143,205 shares of company stock worth $48,842,490 over the last three months. 0.13% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Visa

A number of hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in V. Riverstone Advisors LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Visa in the 4th quarter valued at $217,000. Journey Strategic Wealth LLC boosted its position in Visa by 16.4% in the fourth quarter. Journey Strategic Wealth LLC now owns 9,678 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $3,058,000 after buying an additional 1,361 shares in the last quarter. King Wealth Management Group boosted its position in Visa by 9.0% in the fourth quarter. King Wealth Management Group now owns 74,874 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $23,663,000 after buying an additional 6,172 shares in the last quarter. Generali Investments CEE investicni spolecnost a.s. acquired a new stake in shares of Visa during the fourth quarter worth approximately $10,163,000. Finally, Copley Financial Group Inc. bought a new position in shares of Visa in the third quarter valued at approximately $616,000. 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.