Research archive for V

Visa released its September quarter numbers showing a double-digit decline in revenues, as closed borders and limited travel hurt its high margin business. The recovery so far has been led by contactless payments as people stay close to home and spend more on their local travel adventures.

The payments space is an exciting investment theme. One which we are heavily exposed to via Visa. It has been very interesting to follow the US payments space as a South African because we are ahead of them in this area.

Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai. These are CEOs of large businesses, have a huge amount of influence and are all household names these days. Ever heard of Alfred F Kelly? Not many have. He is the CEO and Chairman of Visa, a stock held by 501 Vestact clients. I have decided to give you a bit more information about him.

Visa was out with third quarter results after the bell last night. At first glance they seemed to be in line with revised expectations, both in terms of transaction volumes and profits. Further earnings guidance for the rest of the year was not provided, but the tone of management commentary was confident. The stock softened a bit after hours.

Visa may have taken a knock because travellers have not been swiping their cards in foreign currencies but they sure have benefitted from a huge shift to ecommerce. According to this Market Watch article, 13 million Visa cardholders made ecommerce transactions for the first time ever during March in Latin America. Visa also saw an 18% rise in US digital sales excluding travel. Face to Face transactions dropped 45%.

Another Vestact stock to report last week was Visa; they were reporting for Q2 of their 2020 financial year. Revenue for the quarter came in at $5.9 billion and earnings per share of $1.39, both beating the expectation of the street.

Right, next up in my review of the virus impact on our major holdings is payments processor Visa. As I said yesterday, we need to try to pinpoint how the changed world that we live in now will impact on their revenue and profitability, and decide if we are still comfortable to hold their shares at current prices.

The payments processing giant Visa released outstanding financial and operating results, on Thursday the 30th of January. In a record quarter, the company processed over $3 trillion in transactions, up 11%, which drove revenues to grow by 10% to $6.05 billion. Profits of $3.27 billion also grew at the same clip of 10%. Visa's high fee cross-boarder transaction volume growth increased by 9%.

On Monday Visa announced a $5.3bn acquisition of Fintech start up called Plaid. That is a lot of money!

As we know, Visa is a very profitable company operating in payments; a fast growing sector with lots of innovation. When you are that profitable, you are at risk of disruption. That is why Visa continues to snap up stakes in exciting payments companies.

Our biggest and most widely held stock in our client base, Visa, reported Q4 and full year numbers last night. Here is what Chairman and CEO Alfred Kelly had to say.

In the travel and tourism space we hold Booking.com shares. What many people do not realise is that Visa is also well poised to benefit from this growing trend . I mean, the name "Visa" should be a big enough clue.

Payments processing giant Visa reported second quarter earnings numbers last night. The San Francisco-based company has market value of over $400 billion, and is the largest portfolio holding in most Vestact customer accounts.

Visa released its Q2 earnings, showing that consumer confidence was subdued outside of the US. Increasing consumer spending in North America though, sent profits surging 14% higher. The Visa share price was only down 0.3% after-hours thanks to a very bullish picture painted by management for the second half of the financial year.

One of the things that strikes me about following great companies for a long time is how people underestimate their ability to keep on growing. When we first advised clients to buy Visa shares, it was listing on the New York market at around $15 a share. The actual initial public offering (IPO) took place on March 18, 2008. Prior to that is was a mutual organisation, owned by the banks that issued its branded cards and used its switching network.