Visa Inc.VBUY ON WEAKNESSJul 08, 2020Stock 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.
Warren Buffet has 43% of his portfolio in APPL. APPL is a wonderful brand and strong company. He does not own it today. What worries him a little is that more than half of their revenues come from iPhone sales. They are diversifying, but it will take time. People are tending to keep their phones a year or two longer today it seems. The valuation has made it quite expensive. He would wait for a pullback or consider V, GOOG or MSFT. Warren Buffet must have some amazing incite to take on that concentration in the portfolio.