Update Visa

Updated July 24, 2015. On July 23 Visa (V) reported fiscal year third quarter earnings of 62 cents a share (excluding one-time items), beating the Wall Street consensus of 58 cents a share. At $3.52 billion revenue for the period was up 11.4% year over year and ahead of Wall Street projections by $160 million. Shares of Visa climbed 7.1% for the day. Today, July 24, shares are up again—4.04% as of 2 p.m. New York time—on news that Visa is talking with Visa Europe, which split off from Visa in September 2007, about purchasing its former unit. Visa Europe accounts for 52% of the European credit card market by volume. As of today, July 24, I’m raising my target price on Visa in my Jubak’s Picks portfolio to $82 a share by December 2015 from the prior target of $78. Shares of Visa are up almost 17% since I added them to this portfolio at $63.65 on November 15, 2014. Visa’s earnings beat on July 23 was the result of a combination of an increase in transaction volumes and an increase in the fees that Visa collects for the use of its branded cards and transaction system. Nothing like a dominant market position to make a price increase possible. Visa accounts for 50% of all global credit card transactions and 75% of all debit card transactions. Visa makes its money from fees on Visa branded cards and from fees on transactions that pass through the Visa network. The worry that hangs over Visa in the long-term is that some digital upstart will put together an electronic payment system that will eat into the use of credit cards. That fear receded a good bit when Apple (AAPL) decided that its Apple Pay electronic payment system would work with Visa, MasterCard (MA) and American Express (AXP) rather than compete with those transaction companies. In its conference call after earnings Visa raised its guidance for earnings growth rate in the fiscal year that ends in September to the mid-teens from the previous low to mid-teens rate.