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HD-N vs. V-N. Don’t focus on the current yield. He thinks V-N will deliver 20% dividend growth going forward. HD-N is also a high dividend grower. You need to decide which business you want. He would go with V-N because it is the largest electronic payment network in the world. They just completed the European acquisition and it should be very accretive.
His concern right now is where do merchant fees go? In Europe, they have been a bit more aggressive in pushing them down. There could be more to go. With all the technology changing and how you pay, that is a risk for them. If we had a good market crack and the price went down, he would look at this.
This and MasterCard (MC-N) are the great duopolies of the world. Both have introduced their debit versions of their credit card franchises. Credit card transactions are on the rise. They recently acquired Visa Europe. If you have a 3-5 year horizon, this is a good purchase and it will give you a decent rate of return.
A great business in a very powerful longer-term secular trend. We are more and more of a cashless society. Valuation is not cheap. There may be some longer-term concerns, that as people find new ways to pay for things their dominant franchise could be at risk. Thinks the company will be able to find ways to play in other spaces as well, such as buying something like PayPal to get in the electronic payment mechanism. Any time there is a pullback would be a good time to buy this. A very good, long term business.
This and MasterCard (MA-N) trade in the mid-20 multiples and are growing nicely. His reticence is that they are priced as though they are going to stay really great financial businesses. His worry in the financial sector is not just with the banking sector, but also with the card sector. There is a lot of new FinTech today that could be highly disruptive. He would not be a buyer of either right now because of the valuations.
The dispute with Walmart (WMT-N) is a small deal, but the importance of the issue is for the potential of this becoming a much bigger issue internationally. Visa has a very good position and is the #1 card globally. It does more transactions and business than American Express (AXP-N), MasterCard (MA-N) and Discovery combined. Recently struck a deal to buy Visa Europe, which he feels is going to be very additive. Europeans tend to use more cash and less plastic, so there is lots of opportunity to catch some business there.
He is a little uncomfortable. They are getting a little more global competition and he doesn’t know exactly where they are ultimately going to land in terms of cell phone payments. They are not as well positioned. However, they have picked up a lot of market share from MasterCard (MA-N) and particularly American Express (AXP-N) over the past couple of years. A 20 Plus multiple stock and the growth rate is slowing down.
Strong seasonality from end of Jan. to May of each year. We have gone beyond the period of seasonal strength for this one. It has broken a short term trading range and established a downward trend. They may have a difficult time having good earnings going into the third quarter. A word of caution here.