Visa (V) -) shares moved higher in early Wednesday trading after the world's biggest credit card and payments company posted better-than-expected fourth quarter earnings thanks in part to the summer travel boom and resilient consumer spending.
Dow component Visa earned $2.33 per share over the three months ending in September, the group's fiscal fourth quarter, topping the Street consensus forecast of $2.124, per share, as group revenues jumped 10.4% to a Street-beating $8.6 billion.
Cross border spending volume was up 16%, Visa said, with payments volume up 10% on a constant-currency basis at $56 billion.
Last week, credit card rival American Express (AXP) -) saw September quarters profits rise 33% from last year to $3.30 per share, on revenues of $15.4 billion, and noted that travel demand and restaurant spending would likely remain firm into the end of the year.
"Over the course of the quarter, we saw payments volume growth tick up from July to September, primarily driven by sequential improvement in ticket size growth that was mostly led by fuel with higher gas prices," CFO Chris Suh told investors on a conference call late Tuesday. "Consumer spend across all segments from high to low spend has remained stable since March. Our data did not indicate any behavior change across consumer segments."
Visa shares were marked 0.92% higher in early Wednesday trading, against a 0.13% slip for the Dow, to change hands at $236.91 each, move that would nudge the stock's six month gain to around 3%.
The group also boosted its quarterly dividend by 16% to to 52 cents pers share, while unveiling plans for a $25 billion buyback spread over the next few years.
Domestic travel has been surpassing pre-pandemic levels for much of the summer months, according to The Transportation Security Administration, which said earlier this month that its screened around 227.5 million passengers between Memorial Day and the Labor Day weekend.
That's a larger total than in 2019, the year prior to the pandemic, and works out to around 2.5 million travelers per day through all U.S. airports.
"We have opportunity to continue to catch up to pre-COVID travel levels in and out of Asia," said Visa CEO Ryan McInerney. "There's also the opportunity to still catch up into the United States. But more broadly around the world, I would say we've got to normalize in terms of cross-border travel."
"But I think what's interesting is we've normalized at a growth rate higher than pre-pandemic levels," he added. "People are traveling international at this new normal at a faster rate than they would have been, all else equal, before the pre-COVID level."
- Get investment guidance from trusted portfolio managers without the management fees. Sign up for Action Alerts PLUS now.
