Blue Trust Inc. Acquires 5,368 Shares of Visa Inc. (NYSE:V)

Blue Trust Inc. increased its holdings in Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) by 24.3% in the fourth quarter, HoldingsChannel.com reports. The institutional investor owned 27,432 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock after purchasing an additional 5,368 shares during the quarter. Blue Trust Inc.’s holdings in Visa were worth $8,670,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other institutional investors and hedge funds have also bought and sold shares of the company. Drive Wealth Management LLC grew its holdings in Visa by 13.2% in the fourth quarter. Drive Wealth Management LLC now owns 5,082 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $1,606,000 after purchasing an additional 594 shares during the last quarter. Narwhal Capital Management grew its holdings in Visa by 6.9% in the fourth quarter. Narwhal Capital Management now owns 49,432 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $15,623,000 after purchasing an additional 3,209 shares during the last quarter. Empirical Financial Services LLC d.b.a. Empirical Wealth Management grew its holdings in Visa by 16.5% in the fourth quarter. Empirical Financial Services LLC d.b.a. Empirical Wealth Management now owns 24,868 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $7,859,000 after purchasing an additional 3,523 shares during the last quarter. Stablepoint Partners LLC grew its holdings in Visa by 0.9% in the fourth quarter. Stablepoint Partners LLC now owns 7,256 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $2,293,000 after purchasing an additional 68 shares during the last quarter. Finally, M3 Advisory Group LLC grew its holdings in shares of Visa by 1.9% during the fourth quarter. M3 Advisory Group LLC now owns 1,958 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $619,000 after buying an additional 37 shares during the last quarter. 82.15% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of brokerages have recently weighed in on V. Robert W. Baird boosted their price objective on shares of Visa from $330.00 to $340.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 30th. Macquarie boosted their price objective on shares of Visa from $300.00 to $335.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 30th. Citigroup boosted their price objective on shares of Visa from $326.00 to $354.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, January 14th. Piper Sandler boosted their price objective on shares of Visa from $322.00 to $368.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Friday, January 24th. Finally, Barclays boosted their price objective on shares of Visa from $319.00 to $347.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Monday, November 4th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-three have issued a buy rating and two have issued a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Visa has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $335.52.

Visa Stock Up 0.1 %

V opened at $334.80 on Wednesday. Visa Inc. has a twelve month low of $252.70 and a twelve month high of $337.83. The company has a quick ratio of 1.28, a current ratio of 1.28 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.55. The company has a 50-day moving average price of $315.39 and a 200 day moving average price of $291.29. The company has a market cap of $623.69 billion, a PE ratio of 34.41, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.17 and a beta of 0.96.

Visa (NYSE:V) last released its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 29th. The credit-card processor reported $2.71 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $2.58 by $0.13. Visa had a net margin of 54.96% and a return on equity of 53.16%. The firm had revenue of $9.62 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $9.49 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm earned $2.33 EPS. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 11.7% on a year-over-year basis. Sell-side analysts expect that Visa Inc. will post 11.19 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other Visa news, insider Paul D. Fabara sold 2,171 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, November 22nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $307.97, for a total value of $668,602.87. Following the completion of the sale, the insider now owns 17,894 shares in the company, valued at approximately $5,510,815.18. This represents a 10.82 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, CEO Ryan Mcinerney sold 8,620 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Thursday, January 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $317.78, for a total transaction of $2,739,263.60. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders own 0.13% 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.