MA - Mastercard Incorporated
280.53 -0.25 (-0.09%)
After hours: 7:45PM EST
| Previous Close | 279.63 |
| Open | 280.64 |
| Bid | 280.30 x 1200 |
| Ask | 280.78 x 1200 |
| Day's Range | 278.13 - 280.90 |
| 52 Week Range | 171.89 - 293.69 |
| Volume | 2,079,728 |
| Avg. Volume | 3,425,089 |
| Market Cap | 284.857B |
| Beta (3Y Monthly) | 1.04 |
| PE Ratio (TTM) | 41.76 |
| EPS (TTM) | 6.72 |
| Earnings Date | Jan 29, 2020 - Feb 3, 2020 |
| Forward Dividend & Yield | 1.32 (0.47%) |
| Ex-Dividend Date | 2019-10-08 |
| 1y Target Est | 312.71 |
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Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb Trims Mastercard, Amazon
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3 ‘Strong Buy’ Stocks That Deutsche Bank Loves
When the dentist advises you to brush your teeth, what do you do? You brush your teeth. And when the car mechanic urges you to pump your tires, you’re going to listen to his advice and pump them, right?Well, investing is not much different: when you need some guidance, you heed the expert’s advice.Deutsche Bank is Germany’s largest bank, and one of the world’s largest by total assets. It staffs some of the best analysts on the Street and it currently ranks as number 7 in TipRanks Top Performing Research Firms chart.With this in mind, we decided to take a look at some of the German giant’s recent stock recommendations. Let’s jump right in.Mastercard (MA)Payment processing giant Mastercard has a huge market cap of $281 billion and has swiped its way into the public’s conscience via its ubiquitous presence in our everyday life.Even so, it is not one to rest on its laurels, and has many income streams. The company is developing its ACH (Automated Clearing House) infrastructure, winning new market share (it is in the process of adding Santander in the UK, BNP Paribas, and BMW portfolio, amongst others) and working with fintech disruptors such as Revolut, N26, and Monzo.5-star Deutsche analyst Bryan Keane thinks the multinational firm has an “operating model that delivers,” noting, “MA is dedicated to expanding its card business while also layering on incremental network growth over the mid to long-term through new opportunities such as ACH/real-time payments, B2B, cross-border account-to-account and new applications like bill pay.”The Bill Pay Exchange is set to launch in the US in 4Q19 and represents a big investment for Mastercard. The service will allow consumers to pay bills without having to remember multiple passwords, set up accounts with different billers, and log into multiple websites. Mastercard believes it can become a key player in the bill presentment and payer market.Keane added, “Overall, we believe MA can continue to grow solid low-double-digits top-line (propelling into mid-teens growth) and deliver operating leverage even while investing in future network expansion initiatives, which should drive EPS growth above the high-teens, in our view.”To this end, Keane reiterated a Buy rating on MA, with a price target of $320, which provides potential upside of 15% from its current price of $277. (To watch Keane’s track record, click here)All in all, over the last three months, MA stock has received a whopping 18 Buy ratings. As a result, the stock has a ‘Strong Buy’ analyst consensus rating. These analysts believe (on average) that the financial services giant has big upside potential of over 13% from the current share price. This would take MA from $278.34 all the way to $316.13. (See Mastercard stock analysis on TipRanks)Take-Two (TTWO)Popular video game holding company, Take-Two, might have a problem. However, its problem is one most companies would like to have: how do you follow a bonanza success with another?Its most successful game, Grand Theft Auto V, (made by Rockstar Games, one of the holding company’s publishing labels), has sold more than 115 million copies worldwide. Its sequel, Grand Theft Auto VI, is not expected until late 2020 at the earliest. With the incredible success of GTA V, it remains to be seen whether the new release can match it. Nevertheless, there’s enough action kicking off in the meantime to keep investors happy.Take Two recently posted a strong F2Q20 report. Net revenue grew 74% to $857.8 million, EPS gained 186% to reach $0.63, and the company raised its operating outlook for fiscal year 2020.Deutsche’s Clay Griffin thinks the game designer is in good shape, noting, “While investors wait, GTA V/Online remains extremely healthy (and sets the stage for an earnings step function in GTA VI), the NBA2K franchise continues to move higher, and we have a high level of confidence in the long term net bookings contribution of Red Dead Online… While it may not have the predictability of its larger peers, pound-for-pound we see TTWO's portfolio of IP and creative excellence as differentiated. We think it is in the middle stages of a major content cycle that should crescendo into a Grand Theft Auto VI launch in F'22.”Griffin rates the stock as a Buy, with the price target of $145 implying over 20% upside. (To watch Griffin’s track record, click here)All in all, there is a fair amount of positivity surrounding TTWO right now. TipRanks deems the stock as Strong Buy, which is based on 13 "buy" and 4 "hold" ratings. The average price target is $135.81, which indicates an upside of about 11% from its current price of $121.78. (See Take Two’s stock analysis on TipRanks)Dropbox (DBX)Although Dropbox might have started as a simple consumer-based storage solution, it has gone through a transformation process over the years, and now describes itself as “the world’s first smart workplace."The company recently launched Dropbox Spaces, a set of tools which includes new features developed through its machine intelligence platform, DBXi. In addition, the company added several new collaboration features across Dropbox surfaces. Alongside the new features though, the company also increased the price of its Dropbox Plus service.The company’s recently posted 3Q19 report was the first to examine the impact of the price increase on average revenue per user (ARPU) and net adds/churn. The print left a solid impression on 5-star Deutsche Bank analyst Karl Keirstead, who noted, “Dropbox delivered solid/clean results, marked by a modest top-line beat (20% c/c growth relative to 19%-20% guide) made up of ARPU growth of 4% (5%-6% ex-FX) and net adds of 400k (compared with guidance of 300k, implying no material uptick in churn).” The analyst continued, "The debate may now turn to whether the 4Q19/1Q20 guide for net adds of just 200k is evidence of delayed churn or merely conservative guidance. We continue to believe that the outlook for high-teens/20% growth and margin expansion warrants 2020 multiples higher than the current levels of 4x revs and 24x FCF."As a result, Keirstead reiterated his Buy rating on DBX stock along with a $28 price target, suggesting room for almost 50% upside. (To watch Keirstead’s track record, click here)The Street is with Keirstead on this one, as Dropbox currently has a consensus of 7 Buys and 1 Hold, making it a Strong Buy. With an average stock-price forecast of $30.71, analysts are predicting a handsome upside potential of over 60% for the stock. (See Dropbox’s stock analysis on TipRanks)
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- Reuters
UPDATE 1-Visa, Mastercard draw FTC inquiry over debit card transactions - Bloomberg Law
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has initiated a preliminary inquiry on Visa Inc and Mastercard Inc for possibly prohibiting merchants from using other debit networks, Bloomberg Law reported on Wednesday, citing sources. The regulator is looking into whether Visa, Mastercard and other large debit card issuers are blocking retailers from routing card transactions over alternative networks such as Pulse, NYCE and Star, the report said.
- Reuters
Visa, Mastercard draw FTC inquiry over debit card transactions: Bloomberg Law
The regulator is looking into whether Visa, Mastercard and other large debit card issuers are blocking retailers from routing card transactions over alternative networks such as Pulse, NYCE and Star, the report said. The FTC has been reaching out to large merchants and their trade groups over the issue, the report added.
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Genpact (G) Surpasses Q3 Earnings and Revenue Estimates
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S&P Global (SPGI) Stock Rises 50.1% Year to Date: Here's Why
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Why Is Green Dot (GDOT) Down 17% Since Last Earnings Report?
Green Dot's (GDOT) third-quarter 2019 earnings decline year over year.
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The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Global Payments, Mastercard, Fiserv and FleetCor
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Tencent Should Be Split Up
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- China’s most ubiquitous company is hiding one of its most valuable assets. That needs to change.Tencent Holdings Ltd., best known for the WeChat messenger that almost everyone in the country uses, has a growing fintech business. But it’s getting overshadowed by the games and social media divisions. By spinning it off into a new company, with a move to a separate listing, management could unlock as much as $230 billion in value. That would make the entity China’s fourth-largest listed company and the world’s sixth-biggest financial services firm.Such a move could help Tencent retake some of the limelight that it’s about to share with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. once that company lists in Hong Kong. Alibaba’s fintech unit, Ant Financial Services Group, already functions as a separate business with the e-commerce giant holding a 33% stake. At Tencent, fintech and business services accounted for 26% of revenue last quarter. The Shenzhen-based company is due to report third-quarter earnings late Wednesday.I estimate that revenue from Tencent’s fintech business grew in excess of 70% last year.(1) The vast majority of that was payments. Yet Tencent also offers other products such as wealth management and has a 30% stake in WeBank, China’s first online-only bank, which was founded five years ago. Data on its fintech profits are hard to ascertain, yet information disclosed by Alibaba shows that Ant Financial was unprofitable last year, so Tencent could be in a similar boat. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The two rivals are startups in the classic sense, using fast revenue growth driven by marketing and incentives to gain ground fast. A major reason why both have lost money in recent years is due to low take rates, the commissions received from processing payments, because they’ve offered discounts to consumers and merchants. A turnaround could be near, Sanford C Bernstein senior analyst David Dai wrote in a recent series on China’s fintech sector. He estimates that a maturing market will ease cut-throat competition and allow both companies to take a greater share of the money that sloshes through their payments platforms.As a result, Tencent’s payment business (TenPay) alone could be worth $137 billion, compared to $127 billion for Ant’s AliPay, the Bernstein team figures. HSBC Holdings Plc uses two methodologies(2) to come up with an estimated value of around $128 billion. Throw in the other products, and Bernstein calculates a base-case valuation for Tencent’s fintech unit of $160 billion, going as high as $230 billion. This indicates that 40% to 58% of Tencent’s current market cap is locked up in this hitherto hidden division. Bernstein has a base case of $210 billion for Ant, reaching as high as $320 billion.Payments spinoffs have proven to be lucrative in the past. EBay Inc. proved it with PayPal Holdings Inc. in 2015, with the latter posting a 177% normalized return since then, outpacing the 145% rise in the S&P Data Processing sub-index which includes Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. PayPal also trounced both eBay (35%) and the S&P 500 (49%). Square Inc., another payments provider, has been one of the hottest stocks of the past decade, returning more than 590% since its initial public offering in 2015.A more recent example comes from India, where Walmart Inc. is reported to be spinning off payments business PhonePe from local e-commerce company Flipkart Group, which it acquired last year. That transaction could turn a $20.8 billion startup into two unicorns with a combined value of more than $30 billion. Tencent doesn’t need to rush to list this fintech unit. Appetite for mega IPOs is likely to be satiated by Alibaba’s Hong Kong listing and that of Saudi Aramco over the next few months. And there’s a long runway of big startups ready for their moment in the sun. By merely making it a separate entity, management can signal intent and allow investors to start re-rating Tencent’s stock accordingly.An offering may not even be necessary, since Tencent is already sitting on more cash than it needs. Instead, the company could distribute shares in Tencent Fintech to existing shareholders, and then directly list the stock. That’s similar to the approach advocated by activist investor Dan Loeb for a Sony Corp. split.Tencent is sitting on a bright light in this fintech unit. Time to let it shine.(Updates to include reference to third-quarter earnings schedule in third paragraph.)(1) The "others" category includes fintech, cloud, film & TV. Tencent noted that fintech is the major component and gave a figure for cloudbut not content.(2) HSBC Approach 1: valuation per user. Approach 2: Using Tencent operating margins applied to its payments business, then comparing to peers.To contact the author of this story: Tim Culpan at tculpan1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Patrick McDowell at pmcdowell10@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Tim Culpan is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. He previously covered technology for Bloomberg News.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Mastercard, UnitedHealth, Merck, Qualcomm and CVS Health
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Why Booz Allen (BAH) Is Down 3.3% Since Last Earnings Report
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Play These 4 Stocks to Gain From the Fintech Boom
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The Art Of Portfolio Management: Fewer Growth Stocks Are The Best Path To A Big Return
You know and follow good rules for buying and selling growth stocks and when to enter the market. Now, focus on concentration and position sizing.
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Mastercard Partners Tappy to Enable Payment Via Wearables
Mastercard (MA) partners with Tappy Technologies to provide payment services via fashion accessories.
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Top Analyst Reports for Mastercard, UnitedHealth & Merck
Top Analyst Reports for Mastercard, UnitedHealth & Merck
- InvestorPlace
Strong Q3 Numbers Confirm That Square Stock Will Rebound
It's been a rough past 12 months for shares of payments processor Square (NYSE:SQ), as slowing growth trends coupled with competition and valuation concerns have caused SQ stock to plunge from an all-time high price tag of $100 back in late September 2018, to a $50 price tag in late September 2019.Source: IgorGolovniov / Shutterstock.com But, SQ stock is starting to show signs of life again. In early November 2019, the company reported third-quarter numbers that were much better than expected, and broadly eased slowing growth and competition concerns. Square stock popped about 5% to three-month highs in response to the strong print.Is this post-earnings pop in SQ stock the start of a bigger rebound? Or is it just a head-fake in a stock that's doomed to head lower?InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading TipsI think it's the former. The strong third-quarter earnings report added further evidence to the notion that this company can simultaneously sustain strong revenue growth at scale, while rapidly improving its margin profile. This combination paves the path for Square to generate robust profit growth over the next few years. Some of that profit growth is priced into SQ stock today. Some isn't. The part that isn't is what will drive SQ stock higher from here.The investment implication? Buy into the Square stock rebound. This stock is heading for $70 soon. Square Earnings Add Credibility to Bull ThesisIn the big picture, Square's third-quarter earnings report was yet another piece of evidence providing support for the bull thesis underpinning Square stock.What is that bull thesis? Thanks to secular growth trends supporting broader adoption of non-cash payments globally, Square is well positioned to deliver sustained strong revenue and profit growth for the foreseeable future. * 7 Beverage Stocks to Stock Up On It may sound like a mouthful. But, when you break it down, it's simple. Consumers everywhere are pivoting to non-cash payments because paying with a card or a phone is so much easier than paying with cash. Businesses globally have to keep up with this pivot. Square builds solutions which allow them to do that. At first, Square simply offered businesses point-of-sale hardware solutions so that they could accept all sorts of non-cash payments. Now, Square has since built out an ecosystem of software offerings complementing the core non-cash payment process, and all of these services feature high gross margins, so scale should ultimately drive big revenues and big profits here.At this point, the numbers tell the story. Gross payment volume through Square's ecosystem rose 25% year-over-year in Q3, following 25% growth last quarter. Adjusted revenue growth was yet again in the 40%-and-up territory. Adjusted EBITDA margins expanded more than 500 basis points year-over-year to record highs, continuing what has been a multi-year stretch of margin improvements. The guide calls for all this to continue next quarter.Square is leveraging product innovation and secular growth tailwinds to sustain big revenue growth at scale and drive margins significantly higher. This trend has been alive for several years now. The more quarters Square turns in like this one, the more likely it appears that this trend will remain alive for the next several years, too. Square Stock Is UndervaluedGiven increased support for the notion that Square will remain a big revenue and profit growth company for a lot longer, SQ stock appears undervalued under $65.The numbers are simple. Global retail sales are projected to grow at a 4%-5% annualized pace over the next few years. In 2019, Square projects to own about 0.42% of the global retail sales pie, up from 0.35% in 2018, 0.28% in 2017 and 0.23% in 2016. Thus, thanks mostly to secular tailwinds underpinning non-cash payment adoption, Square has been able to consistently grow share in the global retail market.This dynamic will continue. Assuming Square continues to expand share at a cadence of 5 to 7 basis points each year, and further assuming that Square's services ecosystem continues to expand and become more valuable in a non-cash dominated world, then Square should easily remain a 20%-plus revenue growth company for the next several years.Profit margins should continue to improve. All of Square's businesses operate at high gross margins. Operating expense growth will be big to support big growth. But, it won't be 20%-plus big. As such, steady 20%-plus revenue growth on top of sub-20% expense growth should drive healthy margin expansion.This combination of 20%-plus revenue growth and steady margin expansion should drive somewhere around 30%-plus profit growth. By my numbers, Square will hit $4 in earnings per share by fiscal 2025. Mature payments companies, like Visa (NYSE:V) and Mastercard (NYSE:MA), trade around 30-times forward earnings. Applying that industry-average multiple to $4 in 2025 EPS, you arrive at a 2024 price target for SQ stock of $120.Discounted back by 10% per year, that equates to a 2019 price target for SQ stock of $75. That's notably higher than where shares trade hands today. Bottom Line on SQ StockSquare stock has been beaten and bruised over the past year, mostly thanks to slowing growth trends giving credence to the idea that competition is killing the Square growth narrative.But, in the third quarter, growth trends stabilized sequentially. This sequential stabilization in growth erodes the bear thesis which has dominated SQ stock over the past year. Instead, it adds credibility to the idea that Square will sustain large revenue growth at scale for a lot longer.With respect to SQ stock, the impacts of this are obvious. If this growth stabilization persists -- and it should -- the past year's selloff in SQ stock, could turn into a rally over the next year.As of this writing, Luke Lango was long SQ. More From InvestorPlace * 2 Toxic Pot Stocks You Should Avoid * 7 Stocks to Sell Before They Roll Over * 5 Beaten-Up Stocks to Buy That Could Be Saved By An Acquisition * 4 Startup Stocks Getting Smashed The post Strong Q3 Numbers Confirm That Square Stock Will Rebound appeared first on InvestorPlace.
- Bloomberg
Mastercard Launches ‘Fintech Express’ in Asia Pacific
Nov.11 -- Ari Sarker, co-president for Asia-Pacific at Mastercard, discusses the launch of their “Fintech Express” platform in Asia-Pacific, how the platform works, their business strategy, blockchain technology, their pullback from Libra and his outlook for the company. He speaks on “Bloomberg Markets: Asia” from the sidelines of the Singapore FinTech Festival in Singapore. (Corrects spelling of company's name in headline and description. The clip was originally published on Nov. 11)
