NEW YORK -- Payment-processing giant Visa said its fiscal third-quarter profit rose sharply from a year earlier, after its purchase of Visa Europe.
The San Francisco company earned $2.06 billion in the period that ended June 30, or 87 cents a share, compared with a profit of $412 million, or 12 cents per share, in the same period a year ago. Last year's results included a one-time restructuring charge tied into Visa's purchase and integration of Visa Europe.
The results beat the expectation of analysts who according to FactSet had been looking for Visa to earn 81 cents a share.
Visa has been benefiting from its $23 billion purchase of Visa Europe in June 2016, which gathered all operators of the Visa payment network under one company. It also was helped by replacing American Express as the payment processor for Costco, the nation's largest warehouse store chain.
Visa processed $1.86 trillion on its network in the quarter, the company said, which is up 38 percent from a year earlier. Payments processed in the U.S., which is Visa's largest market, were up 12 percent. Visa takes a small fee of each transaction that is processed on its network, and its fortunes are directly tied into how much consumers process on its network versus American Express and MasterCard.
Companywide revenue came to $4.57 billion for the quarter, up from $3.63 billion in the same period a year earlier.
Business on 07/21/2017