MasterCard's Profit Tops Street View

Purchase, N.Y. (TheStreet) -- MasterCard (MA Quote) reported a third-quarter profit of $456 million, or $3.48 a share, widely exceeding Wall Street's consensus estimate.

Including special items, the electronic payments company earned $452 million, or $3.45 a share, for the three months ended Sept. 30. The latest quarter included a charge of $6.2 million, before taxes, related to a litigation settlement.

Revenue rose 2% in the third quarter to $1.4 billion, also surpassing analysts' expectations. The company attributed the topline outperformance to pricing changes and an increased number of transactions processed in the quarter to 5.8 billion. On a constant currency basis, revenue rose 3.9% in the period from a year ago.

The average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters was for a profit of of $2.94 a share in the September period on $1.35 billion of revenue.

In the year-ago quarter, MasterCard posted a loss of $193.5 million, or $1.49 a share. That figure reflected a pre-tax charge of $827.5 million related to antitrust litigation settlement with Discover Financial Services (DFS Quote).

Still the impact of the recessionary economic environment was evident. MasterCard's gross dollar volume was relatively flat at $633 billion for the quarter, while cross border volumes were lower compared to levels a year earlier.

Worldwide purchase volume during the quarter was also relatively flat, up just 0.4% on a local currency basis, vs. the third quarter of 2008, to $480 billion, it said.

Total operating expenses fell 13.3%, excluding special items, to $685 million, MasterCard said.