Payments Company Stocks Post Winning Week

Payments stocks performed decidedly to the upside last week, with only one company showing losses, and scant ones at that.

Square was the biggest gainer on the week, with shares buoyed by almost 5 percent on news that the mobile payments processing firm has opened its first brick-and-mortar store.  That store, which is based in Manhattan, is geared toward displaying hardware offerings to merchants and for offering in-person technical support.

Mitek Systems stock followed as the next-highest gainer, with 4 percent on the week.  News has been sporadic from the firm in the wake of earnings.  But it should be noted that Mitek said earlier in the month that its identity verification software solution, known as Mobile Verify, now offers NFC technology that can read electronic ID documents that have embedded RFID chips.

Net 1 UEPS Technologies saw its stock gain even as the latest quarterly results missed expectations. The company said last week that earnings came in at 41 cents a share, which missed the Street by three cents, impacted by higher share counts and receivables provisions.  Excluding those impacts, it seems that earnings would have topped the Street.  Revenue was $155.1 million, about three percent year over year, yet below the $172.6 million that had been expected by consensus.   Investors may have been cheered by commentary on the earnings call, where CEO Herman Kotze, newly installed in that role, said he was “actively reviewing and refining” the company’s strategy, with an eye toward eliminating redundancies and installing a new CFO.  Efforts to introduce a virtual card across its installed base are also nearing fruition, he said.

For the week, the only issue that declined was FleetCor, which slipped less than 1 percent on no company-specific news.