Bookkeeping. I added Visa as Pick #5 for my New World of Dividend Investors Special Report (You can find it in the Special Report section of this site along with all the content on this market and its trends for Dividend Income investors. But I’m reposting it as a stand alone pick so no one misses it.
Let’s say you’re a dividend income investor. You need cash income in retirement. Or you want your portfolio to generate cash now so you can invest in new opportunities. Or you just want the extra safety and lower risk that owning a stock with a substantial dividend can bring. Whatever your reasons–and I can think of a lot more–this is a particularly challenging financial market for dividend income investors.But I do think there are strategies dividend income investors can successfully pursue even in this challenging market. In the rest of this Special Report I’m going to explain the three ways I think you should be thinking about dividend income investing in this market. And then I’m going to give you 10 dividend stocks that I think are especially well-suited to producing income (and price appreciation, which is always nice even if you’re an income investor) in this market environment. First pick just posted–Pfizer
After the close yesterday, Visa (V) reported earnings of $2.41 a share (after adjusting for one-time items) for the December 2023 quarter. (That the company’s fiscal first quarter.) Analysts had been looking for $2.34 a share in adjusted earnings. Revenue grew 8.8% to $8.63 billion, again beating analyst forecasts for $8.55 billion in revenue. Visa said payments volume grew 8%, and that its processed transactions rose 9% in the period. And yet the stock was down $4.70 a share, or 1.72%, to $267.91 at the close today, Friday, January 26. Why?
Today I posted my 319th YouTube video: Quick Pick Visa. And I’ll be adding the stock to another of my portfolios.
Today’s Quick Pick is Visa (NYSE: V). Shares of Visa are showing a good trend reversal. From June through July, Visa’s stock began to pick up after sitting flat for some time. The reason for this jump? The company’s second-quarter report included a 13% increase in net revenue, a 9% increase in payment volume, and an increase in margins to 67.5% from 66.9% in the previous quarter. Visa is so embedded in the economy that it can actually outperform the economy. For example, Visa recently went to war with small merchants by lowering the permissible surcharge on credit card payments from 4% to 3% and the company has deployed inspectors to ensure merchants are abiding by that rule. That’s even though back in 2017, the Supreme Court decided that laws that regulate surcharge amounts were unconstitutional. Visa isn’t making a law, but they clearly have the market clout to put this kind of pressure on small businesses. The 20% of merchants that have imposed a surcharge on credit card use don’t seem to be affecting profit margins or growth for Visa. Morningstar calculates that Visa is trading at a 17% discount to fair value, although the trailing twelve-month PE is 30.2. Visa always trades at higher than a market multiple. The 5-year average PE is 35.6, so 30.2 actually looks like a discount. I own it in my 12-18 month Jubak Picks portfolio and will continue to hold it there. I am also adding it to my long-term 50 Stocks Portfolio.
After hours on Tuesday, April 26, Visa (V) reported earnings of $1.70 a share. That modestly beat analyst projections of $1.65 a share for the quarter. But it was a big jump from the $1.35 a share in the first quarter of 2021. Visa’s shares were up 6.47% on Wednesday. Visa is a member of my Jubak Picks Portfolio where it is up 239.26% since I added it to that list on November 15, 2015. As of April 28 I’m raising the target price on Visa in Jubak’s Picks to $266 from the prior target of $194. I will also add the stock to my long-term 50 Stocks Portfolio.
You know how a savings account works, right? You deposit money in a bank. The bank uses your deposit to make a loan. Out of its profits, the bank pays you interest. That interest payment is a pittance today. 0.5% if you’re very, very lucky. But the national average is just 0.06%. What I’m calling “savings account stocks” work the same way that a bank savings account does. (Share prices do fluctuate but in the long run I’d argue that these stocks are as safe as a bank savings account.) And they pay an annual return that’s 10X–or much, much more–higher–than the paltry 0.5% now offered by the highest yielding savings accounts. How do these stocks work and why are they so much better than bank savings accounts? You–investors–give the company capital by buying newly issued shares or company bonds. The company invests that cash in making widgets or apps or whatever. And the company returns the bulk of the profits from those investments to the owners of its stock in the form of dividends, stock buybacks, and the appreciation in share price that results from the growth of the company’s business over time. I’m posting the first of my 10 Greatest “Savings Account Stocks” today and my Special Report will name a total of 10 great “savings account stocks” in posts over the next week. Today’s Greatest Savings Account Stock Pick: Microsoft (MSFT). The average annual return on Microsoft shares has been 28% over the last 10 years. Beats that 0.5% on a savings account, no?
This COMPLETE version consolidates all the 3 parts, 3 buckets and seven picks posted serially for this Special Report
Long-term bucket pick #4: Visa (V). Think of Visa not as a credit card but as a network. We know from watching other networks–Amazon (AMZN) and Apple (AAPL), for example that a the more customers are plugged into a network, the more attractive that network is for merchants, and therefore the more convenient the network is for consumers. All this adds up to extraordinary profitability with operating margins of 65% in 2020
Yesterday I started giving you specific picks so you can start to fill these buckets. I started with the short-term bucket, the most challenging of the three since it requires you to confront the current paucity of assets throwing off yields of even 2% head on. The goals for this bucket were maximum achievable safety since you don’t have much time in this bucket to recoup any temporary losses, a yield that’s as high as possible–anything over 3% these days is gravy. Remember that the higher the yield you can produce from this bucket, the less risk you’ll need to take in your portfolio, and predictable payments in actual cash (or cash equivalents). Remember that you want to be able to spend the returns from this bucket. Today I’m going to give you picks for filling out the third, the long-term, bucket.
