Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) is scheduled to report its fiscal second-quarter financial results after the markets close on Thursday. The consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters are calling for $0.67 in earnings per share (EPS) on $3.60 billion in revenue. In the same period of last year, Visa posted EPS of $0.63 and revenue of $3.41 billion.
This global payments technology company connects consumers, businesses, financial institutions and governments in more than 200 countries and territories to fast, secure and reliable electronic payments.
The company operates one of the world’s most advanced processing networks — VisaNet — that is capable of handling more than 56,000 transaction messages a second, with fraud protection for consumers and assured payment for merchants. Visa is not a bank and does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers. Visa’s innovations enable financial institution customers to offer consumers more choices: pay now with debit, pay ahead of time with prepaid or pay later with credit products.
Analysts are starting to see this company has having a potentially larger upside as Visa is being considered a winner in the electronic payment and IT services space, despite the sector facing continued pressure from cloud cannibalization.
Ahead of the earnings report a few analysts weighed in on Visa:
- SunTrust has a Buy rating but lowered its price target to $85 from $100.
- Oppenheimer reiterated an Outperform rating.
- Robert Baird reiterated a Buy rating.
- Citigroup reiterated a Buy rating.
- Goldman Sachs reiterated a Buy rating.
- Sterne Agee CRT reiterated a Buy rating.
So far in 2016, Visa has more or less performed in line with the broad markets, with the stock up about 5% year to date. Over the course of the past 52 weeks, the stock is up 25%.
Shares of Visa traded at $80.96 on Thursday, with a consensus analyst price target of $86.94 and a 52-week trading range of $60.00 to $81.73.
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