Stock price when the opinion was issued
Having a decent day today in the face of tariff threat. One reason is that, if you look at its business, it's somewhat tariff-proof. Another reason is that money has to go somewhere. So if investors are net sellers on an impulse call, such as tariffs, where does that $$ go -- financials and healthcare are possible havens.
Great business. Benefits from online shopping and move to cashless. Trades at a premium valuation, so good news already built in. Best time to buy a blue-chip like this is on a market correction. Always regulatory risk, but Canada putting a cap on interest rates would not materially affect this name.
Very good performer, but always attracts a very high premium multiple. Seen as part of an oligopoly in the payments space. If there's a downtick in the economy, price and/or volume of goods would come down; there would be less "traffic" on the Visa toll road. In a recession, rather than people putting all purchases on plastic, they tend to be more cautious and spend less overall. So, potentially lower earnings.
Brand is fantastic, with very high ROIC. If it ever got cheap enough, he'd consider it.
Undisputed champ, leaving fintech and MA in the dust. Gives you exposure to the financial sector. Outperforming the S&P financial sector by ~10%. Q1 saw 8% transaction growth. Cautious consumer spending could be a potential risk, though US consumer remains strong. E-commerce and travel spending could push volumes higher in 2025-26.
It's a hold for her, not in a rush to add more.
Visa and MasterCard (MA-N) have been terrific performers over the last few years. There was so much regulation in other parts of financial services, there was no earnings growth, other than a few names. These 2 were getting all of money and valuations kept getting pushed. On earnings valuation, they are in the mid-20s. They’ve actually come down, because they continue to grow and the stocks flattened out a little. When the other parts of financial services, US banks, US brokerage firms start to do better, money will come out of these high flyers. He prefers things like Bank of America (BAC-N), Goldman Sachs (GS-N), Morgan Stanley (MS-N) which are probably going to have similar, if not better earnings growth over the next couple of years.