Visa Inc.VCOMMENTJun 30, 2014Stock price when the opinion was issued
As of Sep 04, 2026. Market Open.
Visa and Mastercard have been treading water the past year because the market has been fixated on AI, but that money has been rotating out of AI into places like credit cards. The two companies have some of the best business models, big moats and trading at attractive PEs, though neither are at decades-long low PEs. Visa's layoff of 7% of workforce is good for the stock. Probably AI is making Visa more productive.
Mastercard and Visa have been weak because cash-to-card conversion has historically been the easiest thing for them to do but is now over. Value-added services are instead driving more growth. Agentic AI traffic is about to go parabolic, so can the cards play the role of authentication layer? He thinks so, and they should. Stablecoins and peer-to-peer transactions are not big deals, not major threats.
Both are phenomenal businesses. Comparable on valuation and share price performance. If you own one, don't switch.
His clients own Visa, and have for a very long time. Makes the most sense for him as more payments become digitized and V captures more market share. It's the largest payment network, so its profitability is a bit higher on margins. Bit north of 20x PE, FCF yield north of 4%. Attractive valuation for an essential business.
Tremendous growth story. This is obviously one that you want to look at as consumer confidence grows globally and consumers take on more debt. Has been a major driver of profitability. Recently had a bit of a hiccup because of what is going on in Russia but doesn’t think this will be a longer-term issue. Trades at a fairly healthy PE multiple of about 24X. You want to give some consideration to a lot of innovation taking place in new payment systems and pipes of payments systems. If new technologies start reducing fees on transactions, that is a longer-term concern of companies like this.