(Reuters) – Mastercard Inc reported better-than-expected profit for the fourth consecutive quarter on Thursday, as easing of pandemic-era restrictions drove a healthy recovery in cross-border spending and lifted domestic spending.
Shares were up nearly 3% at $345 in premarket trading.
After more than a year of staying homebound, customers have started venturing out for travel, dining and other social activities made possible by vaccinations against the coronavirus, driving up spending volumes at payment companies like Mastercard.
On an adjusted basis, Mastercard earned $2.37 per share, shattering analyst estimates of $2.19 per share on average, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
The company said gross dollar volumes, the dollar value of the transactions processed, jumped 20% to nearly $2 trillion. Cross-border volumes, a metric that tracks spending on its cards beyond the country of issue, were up 52% from last year when the pandemic hit travel demand.
Net revenue rose 30% to $5 billion in the quarter.
Peers American Express Co and Visa Inc also reported profits that beat estimates earlier this month, fueled by a boom in spending.
(Reporting by Niket Nishant in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)
