Latest news with #ChrisSuh
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Visa sees economic uncertainty starting to curb travel spending
This story was originally published on Payments Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Payments Dive newsletter. Spending for air travel and lodging has slowed amid general economic uncertainty, Visa executives told analysts as they reported quarterly results. Weaker currencies and a shift in the Easter and Ramadan holidays into the April quarter also affected travel volume, Visa said. 'Obviously the situation is quite fluid, and we're monitoring the data very closely,' Visa Chief Financial Officer Chris Suh said Tuesday, noting 'a meaningful slowdown' in Canadians traveling to the U.S. San Francisco-based Visa, the largest card network, also said that in early April consumers chose to 'pull forward' some of their planned expenditures in certain categories, including electronics. President Donald Trump's tariffs on U.S. trading partners are widely expected to boost prices on many goods, unless they're reversed or mitigated, which likely prompted the pre-impact spending burst Visa and other companies have noted. Visa executives sought to emphasize Tuesday that U.S. consumers are still spending – and showing no signs of a broad retrenchment – despite the lack of macroeconomic clarity into 2025. 'Consumer spending has been resilient and strong, but there's much uncertainty,' Visa CEO Ryan McInerney said. JetBlue Airways, citing Mastercard data, on Tuesday also highlighted a reversal in travel demand that it's seeing. The carrier detected the travel demand slowdown primarily in the Northeast and used data from its bank partner, Barclays, along with consumer spending data from Mastercard, JetBlue President Marty St. George said Tuesday on a quarterly conference call with analysts. 'It is clearly showing that as far as the cut in air travel, it is very much focused on the Northeast, and to a lesser extent, the West Coast,' he said. That data is also informing JetBlue's capacity cuts, which are 'pretty aggressively' focused on the weaker demand periods of Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday evening, St. George said. The New York-based airline also recently canceled plans to begin seasonal flights from Boston to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Long Island to Boston, one of the rare instances he said JetBlue has scrubbed routes before flights had begun. 'Of the trends we're seeing in U.S.-Canada demand, and more importantly, what we're seeing in the bookings on the airplane, it was not going to be accretive for us anytime soon, so we figured we'd better rip off the Band-Aid now and move forward,' St. George said. Visa's fiscal second-quarter net income decreased 2% over the year-ago quarter to $4.6 billion, as net revenue rose 9% to $9.6 billion, according to the report. Visa also said the constant dollar value of payments rose 8% over the previous quarter, with credit volume climbing 6% and debit volume increasing 9%. 'Durability and diversification is on display and yields an attractive investment proposition in Visa despite prevalent macro deterioration concerns in the market,' TD Cowen analysts wrote Tuesday in a client note. Visa's results 'remind us just how impressive its network model is, replete with pricing power, economic shock absorbers, steady organic revenue growth, free cash flow and profitability,' William Blair analysts Andrew Jeffrey and Christopher Kennedy wrote in a note to clients. Also Tuesday, Visa said it had recently passed $200 million in cumulative stablecoin settlement volume. Visa is using its 'Tokenized Asset Platform' to help banks issue stablecoins, with its first bank partner, BBVA, planning to debut a stablecoin later this year on the Ethereum blockchain, McInerney said. 'We do see real potential, which is why we've been investing in the crypto space for many years now,' he said. 'We are optimistic about the U.S. government passing more clear and pragmatic regulations' with other countries doing the same for cryptocurrency, he said. Sign in to access your portfolio
Zawya
31-01-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Visa profit beats estimates as discounts fuel holiday shopping splurge
Visa's first-quarter profit beat Wall Street estimates on Thursday, as easing concerns about an economic slowdown and discounts encouraged customers to splurge during the holiday shopping season. Retailers offered deep discounts on everything from apparel to toys and luxury products to lure cost-conscious consumers while online sales remained strong thanks to a boom in mobile shopping. Payments volume — a gauge of overall consumer and business spending on Visa's network — jumped 9%, while revenue rose 10% to $9.5 billion in the quarter. Shares of the world's largest payments processor were up 1.8% after the bell. Visa also benefited from strong domestic and international travel demand, driven by improved pricing and the absence of severe weather-related disruptions. Cross-border volume excluding intra-Europe, a measure of international travel demand, jumped 16%. Processed transactions rose 11% in the quarter. The San Francisco, California-based company posted an adjusted profit of $2.75 per share in the three months ended Dec. 31. Analysts, on average, had expected $2.66 per share, according to data compiled by LSEG. SPENDING OUTLOOK Although higher-for-longer interest rates were expected to be a dampener, consumer spending continues to be underpinned by a solid labor market and continued wage growth. "Consumer spending in the U.S. and around the globe is quite resilient and strong," said Chief Financial Officer Chris Suh in an interview with Reuters. The trend bodes well for Visa and rival Mastercard as they pocket a small fee off each transaction on their networks. Mastercard earlier in the day reported a fourth-quarter profit that beat Wall Street estimates as consumers ramped up spending during the holiday season. Shares of both companies had underperformed the broader markets in 2024 on worries that a slowdown in major global economies could hurt the sector. (Reporting by Jaiveer Singh Shekhawat and Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila, Maju Samuel and Alan Barona)
