Topic: How To Invest

Wall Street Stock Forecaster Hotline – Friday, January 31, 2025

Article Excerpt

VISA INC., $341.80, New York symbol V, is your #1 Conservative Buy for 2025. The company operates the world’s largest electronic-payments network. It processes credit, debit, prepaid and commercial transactions in over 200 countries. Visa is not a lender—it earns fees from processing transactions. As a result, it does not have to collect payments or absorb bad loans. That cuts your risk. Thanks to rising travel volumes and consumer spending during the holidays, Visa processed 63.80 billion transactions in its fiscal 2025 first quarter, ended December 31, 2024. That’s up 11.0% from 57.47 billion a year earlier. As well, cross-border volumes (excluding transactions within Europe) improved 16%. Revenue in the quarter rose 10.1%, to $9.51 billion from $8.63 billion. That topped the consensus forecast of $9.34 billion. Earnings before unusual items also gained 10.6%, to $5.46 billion from $4.94 billion. The company spent $3.9 billion on share buybacks in the quarter, so per-share earnings gained 14.1%, to $2.75 from $2.41. That also beat the $2.66…