Growth Portfolio Semi-Finals: Visa Vs. Polaris

In the semi-finals round of the Growth Portfolio playoffs we have #10 seeded Polaris Industries Inc. (PII) taking on #3 seeded Visa Inc. (V). Visa is a global payments and technology company that connects consumers, financial institutions, and merchants. Polaris designs, engineers and manufactures off-road vehicles including all-terrain vehicles and side-by-side vehicles for recreational and utility use, snowmobiles, and on-road vehicles including motorcycles and small electric vehicles.

The following table depicts the recent earnings reports for each company:

Ticker	Earnings Date	Actual EPS ($/share)	Estimated EPS ($/share)	Actual Revenue ($ in billions)	Estimated Revenue ($ in billions)
PII	22Oct13	1.64	1.61	1.10	1.05
V	30Oct13	1.85	1.85	3.02	3.04

Polaris is up 56.32% in the past year excluding dividends (up 57.61% including dividends), while Visa is up 35.83% excluding dividends (up 36.4% including dividends). Both are beating the S&P 500, which has gained 23.57% in the same time frame. This matchup will be played out in a best of seven game series based on the metrics below. For a complete list of all the metrics utilized in the seven game series click here. Not all the metrics will be looked at if a team can win and win early. This matchup will determine the winner which will go on to play for the Super Bowl against either General Motors (GM) or Gilead Sciences (GILD).

Forward P/E

Forward P/E is the metric of how many times future earnings you are paying up for a particular stock. The earnings portion of the ratio I utilize is the earnings value for the next twelve months or for the next full fiscal year. I like utilizing the forward P/E ratio as opposed to the trailing twelve month P/E ratio because it is an indication of where the stock is going to go in the future. 

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