Critical Survey: Worldline (OTCMKTS:WWLND) and Visa (NYSE:V)

Visa (NYSE:V) and Worldline (OTCMKTS:WWLND) are both business services companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their institutional ownership, earnings, valuation, profitability, dividends, risk and analyst recommendations.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

82.2% of Visa shares are held by institutional investors. 0.1% of Visa shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares Visa and Worldline’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Visa	51.68%	65.00%	24.62%
Worldline	N/A	N/A	N/A

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations and price targets for Visa and Worldline, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Visa	0	2	17	7	3.19
Worldline	1	1	0	0	1.50

Visa presently has a consensus price target of $397.96, indicating a potential upside of 10.14%. Given Visa’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Visa is more favorable than Worldline.

Volatility & Risk

Visa has a beta of 0.75, indicating that its share price is 25% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Worldline has a beta of 1.52, indicating that its share price is 52% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Visa and Worldline”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Visa	$40.00 billion	16.20	$20.06 billion	$11.48	31.47
Worldline	$4.56 billion	0.02	-$5.83 billion	N/A	N/A

Visa has higher revenue and earnings than Worldline.

Summary

Visa beats Worldline on 12 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Visa

Visa Inc. operates as a payment technology company in the United States and internationally. The company operates VisaNet, a transaction processing network that enables authorization, clearing, and settlement of payment transactions. It also offers credit, debit, and prepaid card products; tap to pay, tokenization, and click to pay services; Visa Direct, a solution that facilitates the delivery of funds to eligible cards, deposit accounts, and digital wallets; Visa B2B Connect, a multilateral business-to-business cross-border payments network; Visa Cross-Border Solution, a cross-border consumer payments solution; and Visa DPS that provides a range of value-added services, including fraud mitigation, dispute management, data analytics, campaign management, a suite of digital solutions, and contact center services. The company also provides acceptance solutions, which include Cybersource that provides modular and value-added services for connecting merchants to payment processing; risk and identity solutions, such as Visa Advanced Authorization, Visa Secure, Visa Risk and Decision Manager, Visa Consumer Authentication Service, and payment-decisioning solutions for fraud prevention; and Visa Consulting and Analytics, a payment consulting advisory services. It provides its services under the Visa, Visa Electron, Interlink, V PAY, and PLUS brand names. The company serves merchants, financial institutions, and government entities. Visa Inc. was founded in 1958 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

About Worldline

Worldline SA provides payments and transactional services to financial institutions, merchants, corporations, and government agencies in Northern Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, and internationally. The company operates through Merchant Services; Financial Services; and Mobility & e-Transactional Services segments. The Merchant Services segment offers commercial acquiring, terminal, omnichannel payment acceptance, and digital retail services. The Financial Services segment provides issuing processing, acquiring processing, digital banking, and account payments services. The Mobility & e-Transactional Services segment offers trusted digitization, e-ticketing, and e-consumer and mobility. The company was formerly known as Atos Worldline S.A.S. and changed its name to Worldline SA in April 2014. Worldline SA was founded in 1973 and is headquartered in Puteaux, France.