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Fifteen years ago, we were first alerted to the proposed listing of Visa on the New York Stock Exchange. We were immediately interested in owning the shares for clients.
Prior to that time, Visa's electronic payments network was owned by the banks that used their services. As you know, Visa is not a credit provider or a card issuer. Visa owns the network that authorises and switches payments initiated at the point of sale, for a fee.
Back then, in 2007, Visa was present in 170 countries and was processing 117 million transactions per day. Now it's active in 200 countries; operates 3.6 billion cards; is accepted at 70 million merchant locations; processes 242 billion transactions a year, representing $11.7 trillion; and generates over $40 billion in revenue on which it earns one of the highest margins in the S&P 500.
The current CEO Al Kelly is being replaced by Ryan McInerney (pictured below), but we expect the handover to proceed smoothly. There are several projects in hand to expand the services they provide, wherever money is being moved around.
Visa has fully overcome the setbacks of the Covid pandemic. Cross-border volumes are now at 132% the level they were for the last three months of 2019. People are traveling and spending again.
Right from the start, Visa has been a terrific investment. It will go from strength to strength in the years ahead. You can't own too many of these shares.
