MasterCard Inc. (NYSE: MA) released its third-quarter earnings report before the markets opened on Thursday. The company had $0.91 in earnings per share (EPS) on $2.53 billion in revenue. That compared to consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters that call for $0.88 in EPS on revenue of $2.54 billion. In the same period of the previous year, it posted EPS of $0.87 and $2.50 billion in revenue.
Revenues increased this quarter for a few reasons: an increase in cross-border volumes of 16%, a 13% increase in gross dollar volume on a local currency basis and an increase in processed transactions of 12% to 12.3 billion.
Worldwide purchase volume during the quarter was up 12% on a local currency basis, versus last year’s third quarter, to $852 billion. At the end of September 2015, the MasterCard’s customers had issued 2.2 billion MasterCard and Maestro-branded cards.
During the third quarter of 2015, MasterCard repurchased roughly 10 million shares of common stock at a cost of nearly $930 million. Quarter to date through October 22, MasterCard has repurchased an additional 1.5 million shares at a cost of about $144 million, with $1.2 billion remaining under the current repurchase program authorization.
Ajay Banga, president and CEO of MasterCard, commented on earnings:
We are pleased with the results we delivered this quarter, in spite of the ongoing uncertainty in the global economy. We continue to see double-digit growth in both volume and transactions in most of our regions around the world. As the world becomes more digitally driven, our innovations and investments in things such as MasterPass, EMV and biometrics are helping to redefine the way people shop and pay with convenience and security.
On the books, cash and cash equivalents totaled $3.88 billion at the end of the third quarter, compared to $5.14 billion at the end of December 2014.
Shares of MasterCard were up fractionally at $100.53 just after Thursday’s opening bell. The consensus analyst price target is $108.10, and the 52-week trading range is $74.61 to $100.13.
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