Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) will release its first-quarter financial results late on Wednesday. The consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters are $1.02 in earnings per share (EPS) and $4.8 billion in revenue. The same period of last year had EPS of $0.86 and $4.48 billion in revenue.
The credit card company was off to a solid start in its fiscal first quarter and it has kept pace. In the period, Visa saw healthy growth in all key business drivers across the globe. In particular, momentum accelerated in the United States, driven by strong holiday spending and e-commerce growth.
Given the recent benefits from the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, the firm is evaluating ways to further invest in its business, people and communities to digitize payments and contribute to overall economic growth.
Visa has a couple tailwinds that have helped boost its performance in this time. Rising interest rates have provided a boost for most financial sector stocks, especially combined with low unemployment rates. Credit card debt also topped $1 trillion for the first time ever last year.
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Excluding Wednesday’s move, Visa has outperformed the broad markets, with its stock up about 32% in the past 52 weeks. In just 2018 alone, the stock is up over 6%.
A few analysts weighed in on Visa ahead of the report:
- Guggenheim has a Buy rating with a $143 price target.
- Sanford Bernstein has an Outperform rating and a $143 target.
- BMO Capital Markets has a Positive rating with a $148 target.
- Mizuho has a Buy rating with a $136 target price.
- Loop Capital has a Buy rating and a $142 price target.
- Barclays has an Overweight rating with a $150 price target.
- Morgan Stanley has an Overweight rating and a $140 target.
Shares of Visa were last seen down about 1% at $119.89, with a consensus analyst price target of $140.15 and a 52-week range of $90.98 to $126.88.
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