Visa Beats Street View; Shares Fall (V)

Visa V released its Q1 earnings results after the closing bell on Wednesday. The company reported net income of $884 million or $1.23 per share, which was a 16% rise over the year ago quarter. This came in ahead of Wall Street analysts' consensus EPS estimates of $1.21. Revenues were $2.24 billion compared to $1.96 billion in the year ago period. This marginally beat consensus revenue estimates of $2.23 billion. "Visa's first quarter was a great start to our fiscal 2011 as evidenced by strong earnings fueled by continued growth in payments volume, cross border volume and processed transactions globally—our core business," said Joseph Saunders, CEO of Visa, in a prepared statement. In the after hours trading session, V shares have lost 1.12% to $72.09. The company is dealing with what could be a significant potential regulatory setback, which is likely to be an overhang on shares going forward. The Federal Reserve is considering posing strict limits on the amount credit card companies can charge vendors for debit card transactions. Look for the stock to remain range bound until this overhang is resolved. Shares of Visa competitor MasterCard MA have lost 0.37% to $238.51 in the after hours space.