Visa Soars to $112

Visa ($V) has been on my Watch List for sometime. It’s a great company and I wish I had added to my Buy List a long time ago.

This is one of the those stocks that you watch go up and up and then beat yourself up for not getting in earlier. The stock is up again today on strong results:

Visa Inc. (V) posted a 16.4% increase in fiscal first-quarter profit as the credit-card processor continued to benefit from consumers’ increased use of plastic while grappling with new federal rules that affect debit-card purchases.

The San Francisco-based company said Wednesday cardholders ratcheted up their use of Visa’s credit and debit cards, driving up the volume of transactions it processed 8% to 13.6 billion.

“Consumers’ desire to use our products is evident in the strong growth we see outside the U.S. and the resiliency we are seeing in the U.S. in the wake of debit regulation,” Joe Saunders, chairman and chief executive of Visa, said in a statement.

Visa posted net income of $1.03 billion, or $1.49 per share, up from $884 million, or $1.23 per share, a year ago. Revenue rose 13.8% to $2.55 billion.

Visa’s results beat the estimates of analysts, who were expecting the company to earn $1.45 per share on revenue of $2.43 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

The company said its board of directors authorized a new $500 million repurchase program for Class A shares.

The stock is currently at $112. Wall Street expects them to earn $5.87 per share for this fiscal year (ending in September) and $6.80 for next year. Unfortunately, it’s starting to look pricey now.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be beating myself up some more.

Posted by on February 9th, 2012 at 11:11 am


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