First Citizens Financial Corp Grows Stock Holdings in Visa Inc. (NYSE:V)

First Citizens Financial Corp lifted its stake in shares of Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) by 108.5% in the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 3,575 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock after buying an additional 1,860 shares during the quarter. First Citizens Financial Corp’s holdings in Visa were worth $1,130,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of V. State Street Corp lifted its stake in Visa by 4.5% in the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 76,610,942 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $21,064,179,000 after buying an additional 3,327,977 shares during the last quarter. FMR LLC raised its stake in Visa by 6.1% during the 3rd quarter. FMR LLC now owns 57,111,843 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $15,702,901,000 after acquiring an additional 3,265,518 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its position in 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 acquiring an additional 2,772,549 shares during the period. Ameriprise Financial Inc. grew its stake in shares of Visa by 2.4% in the 2nd quarter. Ameriprise Financial Inc. now owns 14,610,590 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock valued at $3,833,981,000 after purchasing an additional 345,829 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Legal & General Group Plc raised its stake in shares of Visa by 2.2% during the second quarter. Legal & General Group Plc now owns 14,416,394 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $3,783,857,000 after purchasing an additional 312,286 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 82.15% of the company’s stock.

Visa Stock Down 0.1 %

Visa stock traded down $0.24 during midday trading on Friday, hitting $314.16. 1,748,013 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 3,495,223. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.55, a current ratio of 1.28 and a quick ratio of 1.28. The company has a 50 day moving average price of $309.06 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $285.28. The firm has a market cap of $585.24 billion, a P/E ratio of 32.29, a P/E/G ratio of 2.11 and a beta of 0.96. Visa Inc. has a 1 year low of $252.70 and a 1 year high of $321.61.

Visa (NYSE:V) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 29th. The credit-card processor reported $2.71 EPS for the quarter, beating 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 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 business posted $2.33 earnings per share. Visa’s revenue for the quarter was up 11.7% on a year-over-year basis. On average, sell-side analysts predict that Visa Inc. will post 11.23 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Visa Increases Dividend

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, December 2nd. Investors of record on Tuesday, November 12th were issued a $0.59 dividend. The ex-dividend date was Tuesday, November 12th. This is a boost from Visa’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.52. This represents a $2.36 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.75%. Visa’s dividend payout ratio is currently 24.25%.

Insider Buying and Selling at Visa

In other Visa news, insider Paul D. Fabara sold 2,171 shares of Visa stock in a transaction on 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 transaction, the insider now owns 17,894 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $5,510,815.18. The trade was a 10.82 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this link. 0.13% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several brokerages have issued reports on V. Royal Bank of Canada boosted their price objective on shares of Visa from $311.00 to $322.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. Oppenheimer increased their price target on shares of Visa from $321.00 to $375.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a report on Thursday, December 19th. Citigroup boosted their target price on Visa from $319.00 to $326.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, October 30th. Bank of America upped their price objective on Visa from $279.00 to $308.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Tuesday, September 17th. Finally, Barclays boosted their target price on shares of Visa from $319.00 to $347.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research report on Monday, November 4th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-five have assigned a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $329.70.

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.