Mastercard Inc (MA)
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Mastercard reported net revenue of $32,791 million for 2025. Of that, $13,315 million — 40.6 percent — came from fraud prevention, data services and consulting rather than the card network. And the network itself handed $20,522 million, more than half its gross revenue, back to its own customers. Time to relabel the drawer.
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Basics
Performance
Valuation
Profitability
Balance Sheet & Safety
Growth
Dividend
Quality & Screener
AI Rating
–Not yet rated — we only show a category once an SEC-backed file with at least two cited passages is available. How the Rating Is Built
Highlighted are things our editorial team noticed: green = stands out as strong, red = deserves a closer look. No single metric is a verdict on its own — always read it in context.
Quarterly Figures
| Quarter | EPS (Earnings Per Share) | EPS YoY (%) | Sales ($M) | Sales YoY (%) | Net Margin (%) | OCF ($M) | FCF ($M) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024: Q4 | 3.64 | 22.30 | 7,489 | 14.40 | 44.60 | 4,834 | 4,584 |
| 2025: Q1 | 3.59 | 11.40 | 7,250 | 14.20 | 45.20 | 2,380 | 2,221 |
| 2025: Q2 | 4.07 | 16.20 | 8,133 | 16.80 | 45.50 | 4,603 | 4,563 |
| 2025: Q3 | 4.34 | 23.00 | 8,602 | 16.70 | 45.70 | 5,663 | 5,485 |
| 2025: Q4 | 4.52 | 24.30 | 8,806 | 17.60 | 46.10 | 4,935 | 4,823 |
| 2026: Q1 | 4.35 | 21.10 | 8,398 | 15.80 | 46.20 | 2,999 | 2,845 |
- EPS (Earnings Per Share):
- Quarterly profit divided by the total share count — how much of the profit works out to a single share.
- YoY (Year over Year):
- Change versus the same quarter a year ago — this is how you compare without seasonal distortion (e.g. the holiday shopping season).
- Sales:
- All revenue for the quarter, before any costs are deducted — the top line of the income statement.
- Net Margin:
- What percentage of sales is left over as profit in the end. Negative means the company is posting a loss.
- OCF (Operating Cash Flow):
- The cash that actually flows into the till from the core business during the quarter — harder to dress up than book profit.
- FCF (Free Cash Flow):
- Operating cash flow minus capital expenditures — the money that's genuinely free to use, say for paying down debt, buybacks, or dividends.
Assessment: Opportunities & Risks
Value-added services — fraud prevention, identity verification, data services, consulting — rose from $9,274 million (2023) to $13,315 million (2025) and from 36.9 to 40.6 percent of net revenue; the first quarter of 2026 reached 41.1 percent. They sit further from interchange regulation and can be sold stand-alone (10-K 2025, Note 3).
Of $32,791 million in net revenue, 2025 left $18,897 million of operating income (57.6 percent) and $14,968 million of net income (45.6 percent). Operating cash flow of $17,648 million exceeded reported profit on just $489 million of capital expenditure. Interest coverage about 26 times (period ended December 31, 2025).
The payment network returned $20,522 million as rebates and incentives in 2025 and kept $19,476 million — 51.3 percent of network gross revenue, after 50.4 percent in 2024 and 53.3 percent in the first quarter of 2026. One percentage point equals roughly $400 million. Mastercard names no target, and the auditor treats the item as a critical audit matter.
As of March 31, 2026, $87,342 million of treasury stock stood against total equity of $6,722 million on total assets of $52,449 million (12.8 percent). No substance risk — cash of $7,906 million and quarterly cash flow of $2,999 million — but the buffer comes from the income statement rather than the balance sheet. Price-to-book and return on equity are unusable as a result.
Unlike Visa, Mastercard has no escrow fund: under the 2011 agreements it pays 12 percent of a global settlement or 36 percent of a settlement involving only the banks, out of its own accounts. Open items include over $5 billion of single damages sought by Block and Intuit, over $0.5 billion from six opt-outs with trial from September 2026, over £1 billion in the United Kingdom, plus claims in Portugal and the Netherlands. Accrual: $339 million (10-Q, Note 14).
Three of the 23 percentage points of value-added services growth in 2025 came from acquisitions; goodwill and intangibles totaled $15,020 million as of March 31, 2026, more than twice equity. Add the planned $1.5 billion BVNK purchase. On the pricing side regulators decide: conflicting U.S. rulings on Regulation II (August and September 2025), New Zealand caps from May 2026, an EU information request on network fees.
Mastercard earns money on card payments worldwide without carrying credit risk, and in 2025 it kept almost 46 cents of every reported dollar as profit. But four of every ten net revenue dollars no longer come from the network — they come from fraud prevention, data services and consulting — and within the network $20,522 million went back to its own customers as incentives, more than half of gross revenue. This company's safety sits in $17,648 million of cash flow, not in $6,722 million of equity. Not investment advice.
- Hook: stocktaking of the 100 largest U.S. stocks by market capitalization as of July 28, 2026. Mastercard sat at number 18 with no analysis. No scanner hit.
- Data as of: Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2026 (filed April 30, 2026), Forms 10-K for 2025 and 2024, the Form 8-K earnings release of April 30, 2026 and the Form 8-K of June 8, 2026 (notes offering). Fundamental data as of July 30, 2026. Second-quarter 2026 figures were not available at press time.
- Fiscal year confusion: Mastercard's fiscal year ends December 31, Visa's September 30. Quarterly comparisons between the two are offset by one quarter.
- Incentive ratio confusion: the 51.3 percent applies to payment network gross revenue, not the whole group. Mastercard discloses incentives only for that category; Visa's 28.3 percent applies to group gross revenue. The figures are not directly comparable.
- Price-to-book (74) and return on equity (232 percent) are arithmetic artifacts of equity almost fully absorbed by repurchases and are not usable for valuation.
- Mastercard discloses no separate revenue line for cross-border payments, only the gross fee metric ("cross-border assessments", $12,021 million in 2025). A comparison with Visa's cross-border revenue line is therefore not like for like.
About the Company
Mastercard Incorporated ist ein Technologieunternehmen, das Transaktionsabwicklung und andere zahlungsbezogene Produkte und Dienste in den USA und international anbietet. Es bietet Produkte und Dienste für Kontoinhaber, Händler, Finanzinstitute, digitale Partner und Unternehmen.
| Employees | 39,800 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Purchase, NY |
| Website | mastercard.com |
| IPO Date | 25. May 2006 |
| Next Earnings | 30. Jul 2026 |
Management
| Name | Title | Birth Year |
|---|---|---|
| Michael Miebach | CEO, President & Director | 1968 |
| Sachin Mehra | Chief Financial Officer | 1971 |
| Timothy Henry Murphy J.D. | Vice Chair | 1968 |
| Edward Grunde McLaughlin | President & CTO of Mastercard Technology | 1966 |
| Craig E. Vosburg | Chief Services Officer | 1967 |
| Linda Pistecchia Kirkpatrick | President of the Americas | 1977 |
| Sandra A. Arkell | Corporate Controller & Principal Accounting Officer | 1968 |
| Richard R. Verma Ph.D. | Chief Administrative Officer | 1973 |
| Devin Corr | Executive Vice President of Investor Relations | – |
| Tiffany M. Hall | General Counsel | 1979 |
Executives per the latest required filings; titles kept in their original language. Source: fundamental data.
Chart
Interactive price chart (TradingView).
Data as of: July 29, 2026 · Source: fundamental data & SEC filings (annual and quarterly reports, 10-K/10-Q)
Note: pure fact-based analysis, not investment advice and not a solicitation to buy or sell. All figures without guarantee.