Visa Q2 2011 results are good

Visa released their quarterly results after hours. Cool share code, simple old V, even though the company has not been listed for a long time. The top line was a meet, the bottom line was a beat, but afterhours and in the normal session the stock traded lower. It is amazing how a company can grow their earnings into their share price and how the market gets it right for the big ticket listed types. Although Visa is smaller than you think, quarterly revenue was only 2.2 billion Dollars. That is it. But net income is 881 million Dollars. Wow. Hugely profitable, as you can no doubt see.

I like the corporate profile on their website: "Visa is a global payments technology company that connects consumers, businesses, banks and governments in more than 200 countries and territories, enabling them to use digital currency instead of cash and checks.

Visa has built one of the world's most advanced processing networks, capable of handling more than 10,000 transactions per second, with reliability, convenience and security."

And then the reasons why we like the company: "Visa does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers. Visa's innovations, however, enable its bank customers to offer consumers choices: Pay now with debit, ahead of time with prepaid or later with credit products. In fact, 70 percent of Visa payment transactions in the United States are not credit, but debit and prepaid." It is a technology company, not a financial services company.

The analysts have this company making around 490 cents this year and 570 cents next year, so forward 2012 the stock trades at 13.5x earnings. Hardly expensive for what we think is a transformative business, checks and cash are going to disappear as payment forms over the coming years. Question, when last did you use coins to pay for anything? We continue to buy the stock at these levels.