Visa Solid, But Not Immune (V, MA)

Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) is reporting some stellar earnings considering the environment and this appears to be the 6th or 7th beat against estimates.  The credit card processing giant posted $0.74 non-GAAP EPS vs. $0.72 EPS estimates from Thomson Reuters.  The company also initiated a share buyback of up to $1 billion.  As far as 2010, the company sees 11% to 15% revenue growth and is comfortable with 20% earnings growth.  There are some metrics still showing growth, but it is obvious that not even the great big Visa is immune to a global recession with a world full of price-sensitive shoppers.  The report is also rubbing off a bit on MasterCard Incorporated (NYSE: MA).

There are several other metrics out there which reflect at least some pause over the past despite many thinking that processing transactions will rise indefinitely into the future.  The company said that its payments volume was down 2% at $687 billion from a year ago.  Also listed was a payments volume drop off of 2% at $687 billion.  The total volume was some $1.1 trillion, which comes to a 3% decline from a year ago.  The growth aspect came from the total number of cards carrying the Visa brands with a 5% global gain to more than 1.7 billion. Another area of growth was in service revenues, which rose by 3% to $808 million.  The total processed transactions did post an impressive gain of 9% to 10.5 billion transactions.

There is some stability as well, as the CEO said, “As we enter our new fiscal year, we are beginning to see some very early signs of stabilization in our business.”

Cash and cash equivalents were $6.6 billion at September 30, 2009.  Shares closed up 1.5% at $73.90 in regular trading and the stock is down at $71.20 in the after-hours session.  MasterCard Incorporated (NYSE: MA) closed down 0.1% at $220.55 and the stock is trading down around $218.00 on very thin after-hours volume.

JON C. OGG