Visa (NYSE:V)'s valuation came under pressure following the election early November as the market saw a rotation out of higher-multiple tech and financial securities and into more cyclical names. We used this opportunity to increase weightings across accounts as valuation levels became more attractive.
Visa has consistently grown its revenue, EBITDA, and earnings double digits as it has played a key role in facilitating commerce’s multi-decade move away from paper-based transactions. The Company effectively represents the collective economic bargaining power of many of the United States’ and, more recently Europe’s, credit and debit card issuers – particularly banks. Visa has tremendous scale in card transaction processing, as they facilitated over $5.7 trillion in credit and debit volume across more than 120 billion transactions, during their fiscal 2016 - well above 2015 levels. Going forward, we fully expect to see this growth trajectory continue, with added help from the integration of Visa Europe which, as we've discussed previously, should help drive double digit accretion.
From David Rolfe (Trades, Portfolio)'s fourth quarter 2016 Wedgewood Partners investor letter.
