Mastercard results topped expectations, with a bounce in the top and bottom lines that came as transactions were up 14 percent year over year. The company’s net income came in at $0.96 a share on an adjusted basis, which topped the Street at $0.90.
The revenues for the payments giant came in at $2.61 billion, slightly above the $2.59 billion that had been pegged by consensus and that itself was up 13 percent year over year.
All in all, purchase volumes were up more than 9 percent year over year to $897 billion. CEO Ajay Banga stated that, in a global context, “the United States economy is still holding steady. Consumer confidence up slightly, stable job growth, lower inflation, and, frankly, prior to the Brexit vote, many parts of Europe were showing steady signs of improvement in both consumer confidence and unemployment.”
Asia is a zone of caution for the firm, said the executive, with a “prolonged slowdown in China” and a slowdown in Australia. Brazil is seeing a rebound in business sentiment – and all of this, despite near term uncertainty, might be setting the stage for consumer stickiness, which has buoyed the double-digit transaction growth that has been seen thus far.
Mastercard is expanding from the traditional physical credit and debit cards as its customers move to digital formats, as evidenced by the Masterpass expansion seen this month. The firm said it is having a “constructive dialogue” with PayPal to help payments transparency.
