Thursday , December 26, 2024

Eye on Earnings: U.S. Bank’s Merchant Volume Rises; Diebold’s “Very Disappointing” Outlook

U.S. Bancorp on Wednesday reported modestly higher results in its merchant-acquiring unit for the second quarter, while ATM manufacturer Diebold Nixdorf Inc. posted a $31 million loss after lowering its financial projections for the year.

Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp is the parent company of U.S. Bank and Elavon, the fifth-largest merchant acquirer. The company says it processed $100.4 billion in merchant dollar volume in the second quarter, up 3% from $97.4 billion a year earlier. The merchant transaction count hit 1.31 billion, an increase of 7.6% from 1.22 billion in 2016’s second quarter.

Merchant-processing revenues grew 1% to $407 million from $403 million in the year-earlier quarter, but adjusted for currency fluctuations the increase was 2.7%, U.S. Bancorp said.

In all, U.S. Bancorp, which in addition to merchant acquiring has a large corporate card operation and other payments-related businesses, generated $910 million in non-interest income in the second quarter from payments, 3.4% higher from $880 million a year earlier. Contributing to those revenues were interchange and other fee income from debit cards, which posted charge volume of $16.9 billion, up 4% from $16.2 billion in the prior-year period. Total credit and debit card non-interest revenues grew 7.8% to $319 million.

U.S. Bancorp’s merchant operation is the second largest that is still operated directly by a bank rather than being outsourced to processors. The largest is the Chase Commerce Solutions unit of JPMorgan Chase & Co., which last week reported second-quarter volume of $294.4 billion, up 7% from $263.8 billion a year earlier.

Meanwhile, North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold Nixdorf, formerly Diebold Inc., on Wednesday reported a second-quarter loss of $30.6 million, worse than the $21.1 million loss it posted a year earlier. Earlier this month, Diebold Nixdorf reduced its revenue and earnings projections for the year. The company had expected about $5 billion in revenues, but now says they’ll come in at about $4.7 billion to $4.8 billion, and it expects a larger net loss.

“Certainly, the financial projections for 2017 are very disappointing,” Andy W. Mattes, president and chief executive of Diebold Nixdorf, said in a statement. “While the sales trend has been improving, the timing and volume of orders to date, combined with near-term pressures on our service margins, led us to revise our full-year guidance on July 5.”

Mattes, however, said the company landed some big contracts in the second quarter and is reducing expenses.

Boosted by its acquisition of Germany-based Wincor Nixdorf last summer, the company posted revenues of $1.13 billion for the second quarter versus $580 million a year earlier for the former Diebold Inc.

Check Also

Snapchat’s Blackhawk Gift Card Plan and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 12/24/24

Blackhawk Network will offer physical gift cards to users of Snapchat’s subscription service, Snapchat+. Snapchat is …

Digital Transactions