Warren Buffett’s 8 Best Dividend Stock Picks

1. Visa Inc. (NYSE:V)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 162

Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) is one of the most popular dividend stocks among the 933 hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey. A total of 162 hedge funds had stakes in Visa as of the end of the first quarter of 2024. Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) has 16 consecutive years of dividend increases under its belt.

Berkshire Hathaway owns a $2.3 billion stake in the company as of the end of the March quarter.

Wedgewood Partners mentioned Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) in its Q1 2024 investor letter and made the following analysis:

“Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) stock posted a small negative drop during the quarter. In the first quarter, the Company grew earnings per share +11% as payment volume growth was up +8% and cross-border payment grew a solid +16%, adjusted for currency. Beyond their consistent growth and execution, recent regulatory trends have caught considerable investor attention. The Company’s networks and value-added services drive enough economic value to bank customers and retailers that the addressable market for payments should continue growing at a healthy rate for many more years, regardless of recent regulatory changes. Visa’s value-added services can be extended to less-sophisticated, emerging non-Visa networks to help grow the overall payment ecosystem that make up the vast global payment addressable market. For example, not long after debit interchange rates were regulated last decade, Visa began an aggressive push to allow non-bank 2inancial institutions access to Visa’s networks, which helped drive more interchange volume to banks and offset lower interchange rates. This was a key element that spawned the massive “Fintech” industry that exists today. We continue to expect Visa’s scale and breadth of service offerings will help them drive attractive growth at stellar margins along with the overall payments’ ecosystem.”