Cookson Peirce & Co. Inc. Grows Stake in Visa Inc. (NYSE:V)

Cookson Peirce & Co. Inc. boosted its stake in Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) by 100.4% during the fourth quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 1,958 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock after buying an additional 981 shares during the quarter. Cookson Peirce & Co. Inc.’s holdings in Visa were worth $619,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other institutional investors also recently bought and sold shares of V. Peterson Financial Group Inc. acquired a new stake in shares of Visa in the third quarter valued at about $26,000. Decker Retirement Planning Inc. purchased a new stake in Visa during the 4th quarter valued at about $26,000. Bradley & Co. Private Wealth Management LLC acquired a new stake in Visa in the 4th quarter valued at about $27,000. POM Investment Strategies LLC lifted its stake in Visa by 48.5% in the 4th quarter. POM Investment Strategies LLC now owns 98 shares of the credit-card processor’s stock worth $31,000 after purchasing an additional 32 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Modus Advisors LLC acquired a new position in shares of Visa during the 4th quarter worth approximately $32,000. 82.15% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of equities analysts recently commented on the company. Barclays lifted their price objective on Visa from $361.00 to $396.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research report on Monday, February 3rd. Raymond James reiterated an “outperform” rating and set a $393.00 price target (up previously from $374.00) 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 report on Friday, January 31st. Bank of America lifted their target price on shares of Visa from $331.00 to $363.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research note on Friday, January 31st. Finally, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods reissued a “hold” rating on shares of Visa in a research note on Thursday, February 13th. Six research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twenty-three have assigned a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $353.96.

Insider Transactions at Visa

In related news, 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 transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Also, insider Tullier Kelly Mahon sold 33,741 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Friday, February 7th. The stock was sold at an average price of $349.77, for a total transaction of $11,801,589.57. Following the transaction, the insider now directly owns 36,566 shares in the company, valued at approximately $12,789,689.82. This trade represents a 47.99 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 64,505 shares of company stock worth $22,290,507 over the last 90 days. 0.13% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Visa Stock Down 0.0 %

V stock opened at $352.18 on Thursday. The stock has a market cap of $654.27 billion, a P/E ratio of 35.50, a PEG ratio of 2.33 and a beta of 0.95. The company has a current ratio of 1.12, a quick ratio of 1.12 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.45. Visa Inc. has a twelve month low of $252.70 and a twelve month high of $366.54. The company’s 50 day moving average is $335.17 and its two-hundred day moving average is $307.55.

Visa (NYSE:V) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, January 30th. The credit-card processor reported $2.75 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $2.66 by $0.09. Visa had a net margin of 54.27% and a return on equity of 54.79%. Research analysts expect that Visa Inc. will post 11.3 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Visa Dividend Announcement

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, March 3rd. Stockholders of record on Tuesday, February 11th were issued a $0.59 dividend. This represents a $2.36 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.67%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Tuesday, February 11th. Visa’s payout ratio is currently 23.79%.

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.