5 Best Forever Stocks to Buy Now

2. Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 136

Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) is the second-largest payment-processing corporation worldwide. Headquartered in Purchase, New York, it offers a range of financial services, including credit and debit cards, as well as data analytics, settlements, payment deferrals, and other services.

On April 27th, Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) announced its financial results for Q1, exceeding the expectations of Wall Street. The company achieved a non-GAAP EPS of $2.80 and generated a revenue of $5.7 billion, surpassing estimates by $0.09 and $60 million, respectively.

138 of the 943 hedge funds part of Insider Monkey’s database had bought Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA)’s shares in Q1 2023. Out of these, Charles Akre’s Akre Capital Management is the largest shareholder since it owns 5.8 million shares that are worth $2.1 billion.

Manole Capital Management made the following comment about Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) in its second quarter 2023 investor letter:

“We like to start out all of our discussions by telling investors who we are. We are FINTECH investors, and we define Fintech as “anything utilizing technology to improve an established process.” We realize that half of Fintech is financial, but we don’t invest in traditional, credit sensitive banks. Having managed money during the Financial Crisis, we learned firsthand how certain opaque and balance sheet intensive financials could go bankrupt or insolvent.

We prefer transaction-based businesses, generating recurring revenue, with sustainable margins, and significant cash flow. From our perspective, the perfect example of a FINTECH business is the secularly growing payments industry. Names like Visa or Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA), that generate revenue and profit per swipe or transaction, without the underlying credit sensitivity or risk associated with that underlying line of credit.”