Secular trends will drive Visa higher

Article Excerpt

One of the factors that go into our TSINetwork Rating is a company’s ability to tap into secular trends and habitual behaviour. A great example is Visa, which continues to profit from the ongoing shift to electronic payments. While the stock hit a new all-time high of $263 in December 2023, we feel it can move even higher. VISA INC. $257 is a buy. The company (New York symbol V; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares o/s: 2.05 billion; Market cap: $526.9 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 16.6; Dividend yield: 0.8%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.visa.com) operates the world’s largest electronic-payments network. It processes credit, debit, prepaid and commercial transactions in over 200 countries. Visa gets most of its revenue from the fees it charges the card issuers and merchants using its network. That means the banks—and not Visa—are responsible for evaluating customer creditworthiness and collecting payments. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, revenue fell 4.9%, from $22.98 billion in 2019 to $21.85 billion in 2020 (fiscal years end September…