Visa Inc.VBUYMay 26, 2017Stock 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.
He likes this a lot. The secular shift of global payments from cash will continue, and he thinks it will continue long-term. There are lots of markets for them to get into. A lot of the world’s population is still using cash, so there is a long runway for this company. There are also huge barriers to entry for this space. Feels it is a bit overbought at this point at 68 RSI, so you might want to wait for it to come down to the 50-day moving average, at $90-$91. You will do well regardless of what price you buy that.