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New York • Payment processing giant Visa said its fiscal third-quarter profit rose sharply from a year earlier, following its purchase of Visa Europe.
The San Francisco-based company earned $2.06 billion in the period ending June 30, or 87 cents a share, compared with a profit of $412 million, or 12 cents per share, in the same period a year ago. Last year's results included a one-time restructuring charge tied into Visa's purchase and integration of Visa Europe.
The results beat the expectation of analysts who according to FactSet had been looking for Visa to earn 81 cents a share.
Visa finished its $23 billion purchase of Visa Europe in June 2016 in a bid to bring all of operators of the Visa payment network under one company.
Visa processed $1.86 trillion on its network in the quarter, the company said, which is up 38 percent from a year earlier. Payments processed in the U.S., which is Visa's largest market, were up 12 percent. Visa takes a small fee of each transaction that is processed on its network, and its fortunes are directly tied into how much consumers process on its network versus American Express and MasterCard.
Companywide revenue came to $4.57 billion, up from $3.63 billion in the same period a year earlier.