Research archive for V

On Tuesday night Visa released a strong set of results. Their revenue, profits and dividend all came in higher than expected. It is always a positive sign when a company feels confident enough to have a strong dividend increase. The good results meant Visa closed up 4.6% yesterday.

Visa reported earnings last week that topped expectations and gave an upbeat outlook as spending volumes recovered. The payments giant had revenues of $7.3 billion for the quarter, up 19% year-on-year thanks to a massive 12% increase in payments volume and a 16% increase in processed transactions. Profits soared 32% to $3.2 billion.

Visa had a tough time during Covid because their cross-border payments business was basically shut down. According to their latest monthly data, April and May have been very strong months as the world opens back up. Cross-border payments grew 47% compared to last quarter and are now 21% higher than pre-Covid 2019.

My colleagues have written about the Visa vs Amazon feud a couple of times. There's finally some good news! Amazon told customers that it has finally reached an agreement with Visa over the fees it pays to accept the payment giant's cards on its website.

On Friday, Visa released quarterly results, and the stock surged 10% on the news. The market's reaction says a thousand words. Revenues grew 24%, while net income grew 27% to $4 billion. The growth was thanks to payment volumes increasing 20% and their high margin cross border volume increasing 40%. Travel is coming back.

Yesterday Visa announced that they're launching a crypto advisory service. The company is reminding the market that they are still 'woke'. The Visa share price has been weak recently, perhaps because some investors are concerned that payments with cryptocurrencies will bypass the card networks and become more important in time.

On Tuesday night, Visa released a strong set of results, highlighting that the world is returning to normal. I love reading the Visa numbers because they show how people are spending their money, which tells us a lot about the state of the economy. The company noted that there has been a moderate recovery in travel spending and there are more in-person payments again. Overall, Visa processed 21% more transactions.

Earnings season is in full swing, and here's another one. Visa reported great results on Tuesday night. Remember that this company facilitates electronic funds transfers throughout the world, mostly through Visa-branded credit cards and debit cards.

Visa just announced that they are buying CurrencyCloud for GBP700 million. CurrencyCloud specialises in real-time international payments and allows its customers to hold multi-currency digital wallets. If you have made an international payment recently, you will know how slow and expensive it can be. This is an industry ripe for disruption!

In my very humble opinion, the primary use-case for cryptocurrencies will be to make transacting easier. Not to speculate, trade and hopefully become rich. That is why we prefer to hold companies like Visa and PayPal that make the movement of money more efficient.

A few months ago we spoke about how Visa was forced to abandon their $5 billion acquisition of Plaid due to regulatory issues. Yesterday, Visa announced that they are buying Tink for $2 billion. Roughly speaking, Tink is the European version of North America's Plaid.

Visa reported better-than-expected earnings for the latest quarter, boosted by an 11% year-on-year increase in payments volume. The payment processing giant has been sluggish of late due to the lack of cross-border transactions and limited travel.

Visa is another company where the "share price hasn't done anything" recently. In fact over the last 12 months, it has gone backwards. Its 52 week high is $220 and it is currently trading around $195 a share.

Early last year we covered Visa's attempted $5.3 billion acquisition of a fintech business called Plaid. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the deal has been called off by the Department of Justice on anti-competitive grounds.

Physical credit cards will soon be a thing of the past in my opinion. They expire, get dirty, get lost and even break. The worst part about them is the onerous ordering and delivery process.