Mitchell Mcleod Pugh & Williams Inc. Has $1.48 Million Stake in Visa Inc. (NYSE:V)

Mitchell Mcleod Pugh & Williams Inc. lowered its position in Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) by 20.7% in the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 4,668 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock after selling 1,221 shares during the quarter. Mitchell Mcleod Pugh & Williams Inc.’s holdings in Visa were worth $1,475,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently modified their holdings of V. State Street Corp lifted its holdings in Visa by 4.5% during the 3rd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 76,610,942 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $21,064,179,000 after purchasing an additional 3,327,977 shares during the last quarter. FMR LLC raised its position in shares of Visa by 6.1% in 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 during the period. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its stake in shares of Visa by 7.7% during the 3rd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 38,655,250 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $10,601,135,000 after buying an additional 2,772,549 shares during the last quarter. Ameriprise Financial Inc. boosted its holdings in shares of Visa by 2.4% during 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 period. Finally, Legal & General Group Plc grew its stake in Visa by 2.2% in the 2nd quarter. Legal & General Group Plc now owns 14,416,394 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $3,783,857,000 after buying an additional 312,286 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 82.15% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several brokerages have issued reports on V. Royal Bank of Canada raised their price objective on shares of Visa from $311.00 to $322.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” 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 company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Friday, November 1st. Oppenheimer upped their price objective on Visa from $321.00 to $375.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Thursday, December 19th. Monness Crespi & Hardt reissued a “neutral” rating on shares of Visa in a research report on Tuesday, September 24th. Finally, Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft raised their price target on shares of Visa from $300.00 to $340.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, October 30th. Four equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-four have given a buy rating and two have assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Visa has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $331.92.

Insider Activity at Visa

In other news, insider Paul D. Fabara sold 2,171 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated 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 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 through the SEC website. Also, CEO Ryan Mcinerney sold 8,620 shares of Visa stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, January 2nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $317.78, for a total value of $2,739,263.60. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. 0.13% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Visa Stock Performance

Shares of Visa stock opened at $323.76 on Wednesday. The company’s 50 day moving average price is $313.59 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $289.09. The firm has a market capitalization of $603.12 billion, a P/E ratio of 33.27, a P/E/G ratio of 2.15 and a beta of 0.96. Visa Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $252.70 and a fifty-two week high of $324.58. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.55, a current ratio of 1.28 and a quick ratio of 1.28.

Visa (NYSE:V) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 29th. The credit-card processor reported $2.71 earnings per share 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 for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $9.49 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $2.33 EPS. Visa’s quarterly revenue was up 11.7% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, equities analysts forecast that Visa Inc. will post 11.2 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Visa Increases Dividend

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, December 2nd. Stockholders of record on Tuesday, November 12th were paid a $0.59 dividend. The ex-dividend date was Tuesday, November 12th. This represents a $2.36 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.73%. This is an increase from Visa’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.52. Visa’s dividend payout ratio is currently 24.25%.

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.