Billionaire Steve Cohen’s Top 5 Stock Picks

4. Visa Inc. (NYSE: V)

Value: $281,093,000
Percent of Steve Cohen’s 13F Portfolio: 1.37%
No. of Hedge Fund Holders: 166

Point72 Asset Management increased its stake in payments company Visa by 241% in the fourth quarter, ending the period with $281 million worth of the company’s stock. Visa shares are up 40% over the last 12 months. In fiscal first quarter, Visa experienced an improved volume and transactions amid growing spending worldwide. Its EPS in the quarter came in at $1.42 , surpassing the consensus of $1.27. Revenue in the period came in at $5.69 billion, versus the Street’s estimate of $5.52 billion. Payments volume jumped 5% on a year-over-year basis.

As of the end of the fourth quarter, there were 166 hedge funds in Insider Monkey’s database that held stakes in Visa, compared to 160 funds in the third quarter. Fisher Asset Management, with 22.2 million shares of Visa, is the biggest stakeholder in the company. Visa Inc. ranks 5th in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds: 2020 Q4 Rankings.

In their Q4 2020 investor letter, Bretton Fund highlighted a few stocks and Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) is one of them. Here is what the fund said:

“While consumers resumed much of their spending by summer, what and how they used their Visas and Mastercards changed. For obvious reasons, people shifted to contactless payments—one of the Covid-era changes we think is permanent—and replaced travel purchases with online shopping and food delivery. Consumers spent more on their debit cards and less on their credit cards; Visa and Mastercard make more per transaction on the latter. They also make more on cross-border transactions that come mostly from international travel, which ground to a halt early in the pandemic. Visa’s and Mastercard’s earnings per share fell by 7% and 16%, respectively, compared to their usual mid-teens growth. We’re not too worried, and we think they’ll catch up nicely in the post-vaccine world. Visa’s stock returned 17.1% and Mastercard’s 20.2%.”