(8 February 2010 – USA) MasterCard Incorporated has announced its 2009 end quarter and full year results, reporting a fourth quarter net income of US$294 million (A$339 million).The company reported a 23 percent increase in the company’s fourth quarter profits largely due to a fee increase of around five percent that was implemented to combat fading credit card use in the US.
Credit card use dropped nearly eight percent in the US, while rising about nine percent in the rest of the world.
The group’s net revenue for the fourth quarter of 2009 was US$1.3 billion, a 6.0 percent increase versus the same period in 2008.
As of December 31, 2009, the company’s customers had issued 966 million MasterCard cards, a decline of 1.3 percent over the cards issued at December 31, 2008.
For all of 2009, MasterCard posted a profit of US$1.46 billion (A$1.65 billion), versus a loss of US$253.9 million for 2008. Revenue rose 2 percent to US$5.1 billion, from US$5 billion in 2008.
MasterCard’s chief executive officer, Robert Selander, said that in 2009 the company took important steps to maintain MasterCard’s bottom-line growth, and as a result delivered another quarter and year of solid financial results.
Mr Selander commented that throughout the year, MasterCard greatly improved its expense management and realigned the organisation to capitalise on the most promising growth opportunities, from both a geographic and product development standpoint.