Visa aims to simplify share structure

Article Excerpt

VISA INC. $230 is a buy. The company (New York symbol V; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 2.1 billion; Market cap: $483.0 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 15.1; Dividend yield: 0.8%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.visa.com) operates the world’s largest electronic-payments network. It processes credit, debit and other transactions in over 200 countries. As part of its IPO in 2008, Visa issued non-trading class B common shares to U.S. banks as well as class C shares to foreign banks. That helped shelter those banks from lawsuits that they and Visa conspired to increase the cost to process transactions. Visa has now settled about 90% of those lawsuits. As a result, it is exploring a way to convert the class B and C shares to regular class A common shares. The stock dropped on the news, as that would increase the number of shares available. However, any conversion would take place over time instead of all at once. The additional shares would also improve liquidity. Visa is…