Visa Quarterly Profit Up 50%

SAN FRANCISCO (TheStreet) -- Visa (V), the world's largest electronic payments firm, reported a quarterly profit of $774 million, or $1.06 a share, it said late Wednesday.

Adjusted for Visa's so-called "revaluation" of the put option on Visa Europe, the company said net income in its fiscal fourth quarter was $695 million, or 95 cents a share. That compares to a profit of $514 million, or 69 cents a share, in the year-earlier comparable period

Analysts, on average, expected Visa to record quarterly earnings of 95 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters.

Revenue rose 13% compared to year-earlier results to $2.12 billion. Visa once again noted strong contributions of data processing fees and international transaction fees that boosted revenue.

Visa also announced that its board of directors had authorized a new $1 billion share repurchase plan. Visa had previously announced that it raised the dividend on its common stock by 20%.

Visa's full-year net income totaled $3 billion, or $4.01 a share. That is $2.9 billion, or $3.91 a share, excluding the revaluation of the Visa Europe put option.

"We are very pleased with our fourth fiscal quarter and full-year earnings results as we continue to successfully execute on our strategic initiatives while in the midst of a very challenging business environment," said Joseph Saunders, Visa's chairman and chief executive. "Our continued focus, execution and resilience have enabled us to continue to generate solid returns and meaningful growth across our business, products and geographies."

Visa plans in 2011 to "continue to invest in initiatives and investments to grow our core and emerging product portfolios globally, innovate into new payments channels and integrate our recent acquisition of CyberSource," Saunders said.

Growth in payments volume, on a constant dollar basis, rose 14% over the prior year at $828 billion, it said. In addition, growth in cross border volumes rose 16% for the three months ended September 30.

Visa's processed transactions totaled 12.1 billion, up 16% over the prior year.

Visa reiterated that it plans for EPS growth of greater than 20% for the 2011 fiscal year; net revenue growth between 11% and 15% and annual marketing and promotion expenses of up to $900 million, among other metrics.

Visa's main rival, Purchase, N.Y.-based MasterCard (MA), reports earnings on November 2. Analysts, on average, expect the company to post a profit of $3.52 a share, relatively flat compared to MasterCard's year-earlier results.

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