Mastercard Q2 Profit Meets Expectations

reported in-line earnings for the second quarter on Wednesday. The Purchase, New York-based company posted a quarterly net profit of $921 million, or $0.81 per share, versus a year-ago profit of $931 million, or $0.80 per share. Excluding items, the company's earnings came in at $0.85 per share. Its revenue gained 0.9 percent to $2.39 billion. However, analysts were expecting earnings of $0.85 per share on revenue of $2.41 billion. The average estimate among 61 Estimize users was for earnings of $0.89 per share and revenue of $2.44 billion. Its cross-border volumes increased 17 percent in the quarter, while processed transactions rose 13 percent to $12 billion. Gross dollar volume climbed 13 percent on a local currency basis to $1.1 trillion. Worldwide purchase volume rose 12 percent on a local currency basis to $841 billion during the quarter. Mastercard's operating expenses climbed 15.6 percent to $1.14 billion in the quarter. During the second quarter, the company repurchased around 9 million shares of Class A common stock at a total cost of around $849 million. "Our business continues to perform well with good transaction and volume growth, particularly in cross-border, despite the mixed global economic environment and foreign exchange headwinds," said Ajay Banga, president and CEO, MasterCard. "We are executing on our strategy to grow our business by focusing on winning new deals in our core payments business, while building out our data analytics, processing and safety applications. A blend of acquisitions and organic investments in these spaces remain at the foundation of our strategy." Mastercard shares fell 2.27 percent to $93.00 in pre-market trading.