By Rebecca Ungarino

Visa on Thursday reported $5.1 billion of profits for the final three months of 2024, up 5% from the year prior, as consumer spending remains solid even as some inflation persists.

Visa's per-share earnings for its fiscal first quarter amounted to $2.58. Revenue rose 10% from a year ago to $9.5 billion. Wall Street analysts had forecast $5.25 billion of net income, or $2.64 of per-share earnings, on revenue of $9.34 billion.

Payments volume -- purchases made on Visa-branded cards across networks -- rose 9% from a year ago. Ryan McInerney, the chief executive of Visa, said in a statement that earnings "reflected healthy spending during the holiday season and improving trends in payments volume, cross-border volume, and processed transactions growth."

Visa shares rose 1.6% in late trading after hitting a record high earlier in the trading session. Over the past year, the stock is up 24%, narrowly outperforming the S&P 500 in that time.

Wolfe Research analyst Darrin Peller wrote to clients on Wednesday that recent investor sentiment has skewed slightly toward Visa over its rival Mastercard, owing to higher U.S. exposure, a coming investor day next month, and recent guidance.

Both, however, have benefited from a recent rotation into large-cap financial stocks, Peller said. He has an Outperform rating on both stocks.

Quarterly results from Mastercard earlier on Thursday may have also given investors confidence ahead of Visa's numbers. Mastercard topped earnings and revenue estimates, sending shares to a record high.

For the same period a year ago, Visa reported net income of $4.9 billion, or $2.39 per share, on revenue of $8.6 billion. Payments volume had risen 8% year over year for its fiscal first quarter of 2024.

Write to Rebecca Ungarino at rebecca.ungarino@barrons.com

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January 30, 2025 16:20 ET (21:20 GMT)

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