No matter what's going on in the market or a specific company's history, there are always reasons to consider buying shares in a business. After all, some of the best opportunities in stocks are born from historically bloody times.
Motley Fool CAPS hosts a boatload of opinions from more than 125,000 members on nearly 5,400 stocks, giving good reasons to own -- or sell -- a stock.
In the case of payment solutions company MasterCard (NYSE: MA ) , a total of 2,929 members have given a bullish or bearish opinion on the company. Scouring the detailed information packed in the comments on MasterCard, here are three of the top reasons to buy MasterCard today:
Limited credit risk: Visa (NYSE: V ) and MasterCard aren't on the hook for money lent to customers, as are Capital One Financial (NYSE: COF ) , JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM ) , and Citigroup (NYSE: C ) . They simply collect healthy fees from merchants, such as Costco (Nasdaq: COST ) or Best Buy, every time customers charge a purchase -- sort of like providing the picks and shovels while the gold miners shoulder the most risk.
Cash: With the support of increased purchase transactions in its most recent quarter, MasterCard's revenue grew 14%. Meanwhile, the number of branded cards outstanding at year-end grew 8% from a year earlier. The company is a cash machine and has grown its free cash flow over 15% annually in the past five years, which is music to the ears of the many CAPS members who like the long-term cash-generating potential of the company.
Worldwide growth: While American Express (NYSE: AXP ) is looking to cut back on risky borrowers, many CAPS members like MasterCard's strategy to cash in on the world's shift to a cashless society. It recently acquired Dublin, Ireland-based Orbiscom, and agreed to take a majority stake in Strategic Payments Services to grow processing services in Australia, Asia/Pacific, Middle East, and African countries. It also reported double-digit growth in dollar volume in the Latin America and Caribbean region in the fourth quarter and full year 2008.
Of course, there's a lot more devil in the details of these buy-side opinions, which is why CAPS is such a great resource to check and balance your own analysis. You can read the bullish and bearish sides to every stock. To see what the very best CAPS members are saying now about MasterCard, just click on over to Motley Fool CAPS and have a look.
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