Visa Inc (V)

[samaelrocks]

I found this worth mentioning:

And speaking of the best ...
Three of Wall Street's finest chimed in on the year's hottest IPO this morning. On Monday, each of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Cowen & Co., and Deutsche Securities initiated coverage of Visa (NYSE: V) with simultaneous "buy" ratings (or their equivalent).

Discounting the fact of "slowing economic growth in the U.S.," KBW and Cowen are placing their chips on a belief that "an increase in worldwide credit card use will lift Visa Inc. shares" (emphasis added.) Deutsche agrees with its colleagues on this point and further argues that the greater the growth in global credit transactions, the more Visa will benefit from "operating leverage" -- boosting its margins on the growing revenue base.

When bankers (don't) attack
The cynic in me initially suspected that this was just another case of the same people who bankrolled an IPO following it out into the Street to give it a push, so it would roll a little faster. But after digging into Visa's prospectus, I'm no longer so sure. While both KBW and Cowen played a part in underwriting the Visa IPO, Deutsche does not appear to have been involved.

What's more, KBW and Cowen played only bit parts in the IPO, having allotted less than a million shares each. So they have a lot less riding on the success of Visa shares than do headlining companies such as JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), UBS (NYSE: UBS), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), Wachovia (NYSE: WB), or Citigroup (NYSE: C) -- each of which underwrote many, many times the size of KBW's and Cowen's allotments.

In short, while two of the three analysts upgrading Visa today may be biased, their bias is rather limited. Meanwhile, Deutsche doesn't seem to have so much as a Chihuahua in this fight -- so it's word should be good as gold.


http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2008/04/14/this-just-in-upgrades-and-downgrades.aspx