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Free Cash Flow Machine Visa Remains One of Our Best Ideas

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Image Shown: Visa’s ability to generate sizable free cash flows continues to impress. We are big fans of the payment processing giant. Image Source: Visa Inc – First Quarter of Fiscal 2021 IR Earnings Presentation By Callum Turcan We’re huge fans of Visa Inc’s (V) business model. The credit card network’s free cash flow generating abilities are impressive, aided by its low capital expenditure requirements. We view Visa’s long-term outlook quite favorably and include the company in the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio as a top-weighted idea. The top end of our fair value estimate sits at $263 per share of Visa, materially above where V is trading at as of this writing. Overview Visa benefits from the network effect, which … Read more

Visa Remains Resilient in the Face of COVID-19

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Image Shown: Visa Inc remained a free cash flow cow last fiscal quarter in the face of the pandemic. Image Source: Visa Inc – Third Quarter of Fiscal 2020 IR Earnings Presentation By Callum Turcan On July 29, Visa Inc (V) reported third quarter fiscal 2020 earnings (period ended June 30, 2020) that missed consensus top-line estimates and beat consensus bottom-line estimates. The ongoing coronavirus (‘COVID-19’) pandemic weighed on travel-related purchases across Visa’s cardholder base, a dynamic that held down cross-border transactions which tend to be more lucrative for the payment processor. Keeping pandemic-related headwinds in mind, the company noted its performance was improving in several key markets around the world. We continue to like Visa as a top-weighted holding … Read more

Economic Commentary: Marks, Dalio, and the Discount Rate

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Image Source: Mike Cohen We sat down with the Valuentum team to discuss their latest thoughts on recent economic developments. To kick off the conversation, let’s start with the team’s views on the latest memo from Oaktree’s Howard Marks: Mysterious. For those that don’t know Howard, he is the Director and Co-Chairman of Oaktree, which managed about $122 billion in AUM, as of September 2019. The memo goes into depth on the reasons for negative interest rates, the impact of negative interest rates, and opines on whether the US will ever see negative interest rates. Then, we’ll go from there! Brian Nelson: The concept of negative interest rates is not merely academic, but they have far-reaching implications across the global … Read more

Earnings Insight — Amazon

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Image Source: Mike Mozart Let’s cover some ground on Amazon’s (AMZN) third-quarter report, released October 27. What management said: “Alexa may be Amazon’s most loved invention yet — literally — with over 250,000 marriage proposals from customers and counting,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon. “And she’s just getting better. Because Alexa’s brain is in the cloud, we can easily and continuously add to her capabilities and make her more useful — wait until you see some of the surprises the team is working on now.” — CEO Jeff Bezos The scoop: The game has changed at Amazon. No longer is the company struggling to generate meaningful free cash flow; in fact, it is now throwing off copious … Read more