Here’s Why You Should Remain Confident in Your Visa (V) Stake

Polen Capital, an investment management firm, published its “Polen Global Growth” fourth quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A quarterly gross return of 7.08% was delivered by the fund for the fourth quarter of 2021, versus the MSCI All-Country World Index (the “Index”)’s return of 6.67% for the same period.  Spare some time to check the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a clue about their top bets for 2022.

Polen Global Growth, in its Q4 2021 investor letter, mentioned Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) and discussed its stance on the firm. Visa Inc. is a San Francisco, California-based financial services company with a $495.5 billion market capitalization. Visa delivered a 5.59% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are up by 10.27%. The stock closed at $228.82 per share on February 16, 2022.

Here is what Polen Global Growth has to say about Visa Inc. in its Q4 2021 investor letter:

“Visa is also experiencing COVID-related pressures, primarily due to rolling lockdowns and the fact that international travel is yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. The lack of travel relative to before the pandemic has specifically impacted Visa’s cross-border business, which represents roughly 10% of payment volume, but approximately 25% of gross revenues. Like Autodesk, how the near-term unfolds is hard to predict, but we are confident that international travel will return eventually.

At less than 30x earnings, we don’t think we’re paying much for this eventuality. Further, despite continued advances in fintech and the increased popularity of cryptocurrencies, Visa and MasterCard continue to invest to protect and even expand their competitive advantages. Fintech remains a dynamic space, but we continue to believe that Visa and Mastercard’s scale and “network of networks” approach provides both companies a formidable competitive position within the payments ecosystem. We expect mid-teens or greater earnings per share growth for many years to come.”

Our calculations show that Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) ranks 8th on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. V was in 143 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021, compared to 162 funds in the previous quarter. Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) delivered an 11.59% return in the past 3 months.

In February 2022, we also shared another hedge fund’s views on Visa in another article. You can find other letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2021 Q4 page.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.