Earnings Labs

Mastercard Incorporated (MA)

Q2 2014 Earnings Call· Thu, Jul 31, 2014

$527.11

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the MasterCard’s Second Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Christine, and I will be your operator for today’s call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Barbara Gasper, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Barbara Gasper

Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Christine, and good morning to everyone. Thank you for joining us for a discussion about our second quarter 2014 financial results. With me on the call today are Ajay Banga, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Martina Hund-Mejean, our Chief Financial Officer. Following comments from Ajay and Martina, the operator will announce your opportunity to get into the queue for the Q&A session. Up until then, no one is actually registered to ask a question. Even if you think you have already dialed into the queue, you will need to register again following our prepared comments. This morning’s earnings release and the slide deck that will be referenced on this call can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website at mastercard.com. These documents have also been attached to an 8-K that we filed with the SEC earlier this morning. A replay of this call will be posted on our website for one week through August 7. Finally, as set forth in more detail in today’s earnings release, I need to remind everyone that today’s call may include some forward-looking statements about MasterCard’s future performance. Actual performance could differ materially from what is suggested by our comments today. Information about the factors that could affect future performance are summarized at the end of our press release, as well as contained in our most recent SEC filings. With that, I will now turn the call over to Ajay Banga. Ajay?

Ajay Banga

President

Thank you, Barbara, and good morning everybody. So for the second quarter, we are very pleased to report a net revenue growth of 13%, both as-reported and adjusted for currency. That increase is driven by healthy volume and transaction growth, which resulted in net income growth of 10% as-reported or 9% adjusted for currency and an EPS growth of 14%. And these results include the impact of all the acquisitions that we’ve completed so far this year. So let’s start with looking at the underlying global economic trends with the United States where the economy seems to be improving but not without some challenges. Our second quarter SpendingPulse data showed U.S. retail sales, ex-auto, growing at 3.8% and that’s a noticeable improvement over the first quarter number of growth of 2.3%. However over that quarter, the monthly trend decelerated partially as a result of lower gasoline spending, which consumers did not appear to rollover into additional discretionary spend. Having said that, overall we think that current U.S. economic recovery is very much a work in progress. We see some favorable indicators, the continued improvement in unemployment figures, consumer confidence levels and so on. But in fact early indications for July retail sales, again ex-auto, are showing further improvement over the second quarter. But there are some factors that could weigh on that economic recovery, like the slowing recovery in housing and the improvement in unemployment coming in part from an upswing in part-time workers rather than just full-time positions. So despite those mixed segments, our U.S. business saw an improvement in the quarter, primarily driven by stronger growth in our consumer credit volume and continued good growth in commercial credit. Europe. Europe continues a slow recovery path. PCE growth projections remain unchanged for the year at 3.5%. Consumer confidence, economic…

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Ajay, and good morning, everyone. Let me begin on Page 3 of our slide deck, where you see the as-reported as well as the FX-adjusted growth rates. All of my comments pertain to the FX-adjusted figures, which are almost the same as the as-reported numbers. So we are very pleased with our strong performance this quarter. Net revenue growth was 13%. This combined with operating expenses growth of 14% resulted in a 9% increase in net income. While acquisitions had minimal impact on net revenue and net income in the quarter, they did contribute 3 PPT to operating expense growth. EPS growth was 14% and share repurchases contributed $0.04 per share. During the second quarter, we repurchased almost 16 million shares at a cost of approximately $1.2 billion. Through July 24, we purchased an additional 1.4 million shares at a cost of approximately $106 million, and we now have $728 million remaining under the current authorization. We will continue to look to repurchase shares on an opportunistic basis. Cash flow from operations was $729 million, and we ended the quarter with cash, cash equivalent and other liquid investments of about $5.7 billion. So let me turn to Page 4, where you can see the operational metrics for the second quarter. Our worldwide gross dollar volume or GDV was up 13% on a local currency basis, down slightly from last quarter. Overall, our U.S. GDV grew 9% which was essentially the same as last quarter. On the credit side, we had strong volume growth of 10%. This was an increase from last quarter, driven by improvements in consumer credits with growth in high-single-digits and continued strong growth in commercial credit which was in the mid-teens. Similar to last quarter, our U.S. debit growth was 9%. Outside of the U.S., volume…

Barbara Gasper

Head of Investor Relations

Thanks Martina. We’re now ready to begin the question-and-answer period. Don’t forget my earlier comments, that if you dialed into the queue when you first joined the call, you will need to register again to ask a question. And in order to get to as many people as possible, we ask that you limit yourself to a single question and then queue back in for additional questions. Christine?

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) And our first question is from Tien-tsin Huang of JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Tien-tsin Huang – JP Morgan: Great, thanks. Thanks for all the details. Just want to ask on the cross-border yield, which was stronger than we expected. I heard there was some pricing that helped there, but can you also just comment on how sensitive your revenues can be from the FX volatility? I know that Visa has put that in our minds quite a bit, so curious how much settlement trading has an impact on your business, and also if this new pricing that you’ve put in is sustainable? Thanks.

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

So I am going to take this. Tien-tsin, it’s Martina. First of all, we said that we had in the quarter 4 PPT impact from pricing in the cross-border fees. Quite the majority of that is actually going to roll off next quarter, okay. Secondly, with respect to foreign exchange volatility. Our cross-border volumes are really only impacted from a foreign exchange volatility in terms of what the exchange rates are in terms of where people are actually transacting. What we do from a settlement trading revenue point of view, when we actually affect that exchange that is not reflected in the cross-border fees, it’s actually reflected in the transaction processing fee. And when we look at the foreign exchange volatility, it did go down over the last year or so, but in terms of an impact on our settlement trading fees, what’s relatively small, we’re talking about $10 million or so. So it was not a big factor for us at all.

Barbara Gasper

Head of Investor Relations

Next question please?

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Bryan Keane of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Bryan Keane – Deutsche Bank: Yes, hi guys. Just wanted to follow-up on the cross-border. Just trying to understand when we look at the competitors in your volume, your volume seems to be so much higher. Just trying to figure out how much of that is share gain, or is that just business mix? Obviously Europe plays a part in this. So if you can just help us understand kind of volumes versus the industry? Thanks.

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

Yes, Bryan. So when we look at our cross-border, as I said, it was 16% this quarter. In the prior quarter, it was 17%. And when we pull out Europe in the prior quarter, we basically said it was the same number, 17% growth. When you look at this quarter, in the second quarter, and you pull out Europe, actually for the rest of the world, we grew 14%. So it all depends on mix in terms of where people are traveling to and what the overall mix comes out.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Okay and… Bryan Keane – Deutsche Bank: So I was just going to ask, any share gains there before – is share gains explaining a lot of this besides mix? I mean are you gaining share and taking away from competitors?

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

Look, I think it’s a number of factors. One is obviously what are you doing with the existing portfolio that you have of banks, and in terms of how you are pointing the portfolios to be able for people to really use those cards across borders and transact in other countries. Two, obviously there are some share gains in it, but I think you’re going to have to look at those very comprehensively that there are number of drivers. Bryan Keane – Deutsche Bank: Okay, helpful. Thanks.

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

Yes, I just want to correct one thing. When I said I pulled out Europe, it’s not all of our European regions, it’s really Western Europe, which is anonymous to where Visa Europe is operating. Bryan Keane – Deutsche Bank: Okay, thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Our next question is from David Hochstim of Buckingham Research. Please go ahead. David Hochstim – Buckingham Research: Thanks. I wonder if you could just provide some more color on the consistent increase in growth in U.S. purchase volume we’ve seen over the last few quarters. Is most of that Citi reinvigorating the American Airlines co-brand or there are other things that are big contributors?

Ajay Banga

President

It’s Ajay. It’s a bunch of things. We’ve been winning some co-brands over time. Citi American is clearly one of them, but there are others too. And going against it is the roll-off of the Chase book, that’s been relatively slow in the first half, but its picking up as we expected in the second half. So it’s kind of an in and out over there that’s going on in the consumer part of the book. And our commercial traded book continues to do well. It’s a higher growth rate in the low to mid-teens kind of number compared to the number for the consumer book, but it’s a mix of two things that’s going on. David Hochstim – Buckingham Research: Okay, thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Sanjay Sakhrani of KBW. Please go ahead. Sanjay Sakhrani – KBW: Thank you. I was hoping to just get a little bit more cadence on the rebate line given the Chase conversion is now underway. Could you just talk about how we should think about how that progresses through the rest of the year? Thanks.

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

Sir, I don’t think that you should be expecting any major surprises on that. So when you look at this year versus last year on a quarter-by-quarter basis, the only thing that you saw last year is that we had a little bit less of rebates in the second quarter, and a little bit more in the fourth quarter. So I think for this year, you should just expect a little bit more of an even distribution of that, i.e., you’re not going to see the fourth quarter going up in such a significant way. Sanjay Sakhrani – KBW: And then maybe just for the year. It’s kind of comparable then?

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

Very comparable. Sanjay Sakhrani – KBW: All right, great. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Moshe Orenbuch of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Moshe Orenbuch – Credit Suisse: Great, thanks. I wanted to kind of turn back to the acquisitions because I guess the guidance you gave us on revenues, 1% for the full-year. So that’s roughly $140 million. I mean, it sounds like the costs are still higher than that kind of on a run rate. So could you talk a little bit about how you see that progressing into ‘15 and ultimately – I understand that some of the acquisitions don’t have a ton of revenue coming with them. So could you just talk a little bit of how you think about them in terms of the returns that they are going to generate for the company?

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

Yes, look, we are separating acquisitions really into two buckets. One bucket is capability set and the things that we really need to do in order to affect some of our strategies. I would put for instance a company like C-SAM in that. To be honest, C-SAM did not come with a lot of revenues, but they came with a huge amount of capabilities, over 200 engineers in India that are really very well trained in the mobile platforms and helping significant on our execution on the MasterPass arena. The other part of the acquisitions are buying fully fledged businesses like the business that we just closed, which is Pinpoint, and that came in literally at the end of the quarter. So you’re not seeing a lot of revenues there. That’s a fully vest business. It comes with revenues. It comes with expenses. And you will be seeing that coming in over the next couple of quarters, a more still given the other acquisitions on the expense line on the revenue line, but you should be accepting that over a number of years will be really helping – that these businesses really will be helping aiding our growth. From a dilution point of view, I already talked about the 6% to 8% in 2014. I think you should still expect some dilution in 2015, probably to the tune of half of that number.

Ajay Banga

President

Just remember that these acquisitions are lapped during the year. Different ones are done at different times of the year. The impact of that dilution will depend on that portion of the impact in the calendar, and that portion will run over into the next year as well. That’s what Martina is referring to. By and large, most of the deals we do, you would get – even if they’ve got revenue, there may be a dilution in the first year, because they are ending up either putting an investment into their capability to either raise that safety and security capabilities or their accounting and compliance capabilities to what we would feel comfortable. We have just given how that interfaces with the rest of our company. And so a lot of money goes into that effort, into upgrading the accounting, into upgrading the compliance, into upgrading their firewalls, into upgrading their safety systems, their capabilities inside with security, hiring of a few new people. That’s what goes into the first slot. That tends to create some dilution. Companies like C-SAM on the other hand are all about rolling out MasterPass and all that you want to do in the mobile space. As I said we’re in 10 countries already. That’s way more than anybody else is in. And by the way, we are adding four more by the end of the year. And in two years, we’re going to be in 75% of our GDV. I doubt we could have done that without the acquisition of C-SAM, and its inmate capability of that very talented workforce that they have.

Operator

Operator

Thanks. Moshe Orenbuch – Credit Suisse: Just as to follow any comment on the current pipeline of future deals?

Ajay Banga

President

You will listen to us when we have a day to tell you about it. Moshe Orenbuch – Credit Suisse: Thanks so much.

Ajay Banga

President

Honestly, we – I’ve been here these five years now almost. I think Martina and I have probably looked at 100 plus deals, right. And we have done two before this year, three maybe including Truaxis, which has capability small. And now you’ve added these five here. Some of the five we’ve done just now, like ECS, we’ve been – we bought a share in ECS two years ago and we’ve worked with them for two years before entering into this transaction. We’ve been working with C-SAM for well over two years as well. So lot of these deals, they are in the hopper for a while, and there are others in the hopper. I have just no ability to predict to you when exactly they may come to fruition, or frankly we’ll just get away from them because they don’t work either in a return sense or a management capability sense or a geography sense or a product set sense or – it’s going to fit one of those strategic means and that’s kind of how its constructed. Moshe Orenbuch – Credit Suisse: Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Our next question is from Jim Schneider of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Jim Schneider – Goldman Sachs: Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I was wondering if you could just comment on the domestic assessments yields that you mentioned, the lower yield trend you saw in Q2. How should we think about that trend continuing or reversing over the next few quarters, please?

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

Look, I think you should be thinking about that trend continuing. This is not a new trend. We had been seeing that for a number of years actually. And you will continue to see it as we are really growing in a major way in markets outside of the United States in many emerging markets where they have certain structures, and in some markets you have domestic schemes where you have to compete against. And so you’re going to have to align your pricing structure in that way. In addition to that, look at all of the things that we’re doing in the financial inclusion space. Ajay was talking a little bit about it. When people get an electronic payment means in their hand first. Typically, they’re accessing ATMs first and pulling cash out of the ATMs, and then they walk across the street to be buying something in the store. That is typically a lower yielding transaction for us. As we are actually working with those countries and with those consumers to be migrating them to be not going to the ATM but directly to the store, that is where you are going to see some movements from us in terms of being able to get a higher yield, but I think you should continue to see that trend for quite sometime to come. Jim Schneider – Goldman Sachs: That’s helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Moshe Katri of Cowen. Please go ahead. Moshe Katri – Cowen & Co: Hi, thanks. Good morning. Is it possible to quantify the impacts on the Chase conversion in terms of what’s embedded in your guidance for the year? And any sort of color on the potential margin or a yield impact from that? Thanks.

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

Yes. So, Moshe, actually all of that is comprehended in what my thought said about 2014 revenues. It’s also comprehended in the 2013 to 2015 performance targets that we laid out. It’s just – we saw only a little bit in the second quarter, right. You saw a little bit of an impact when you look in particular in our U.S. credit numbers even though they are very strong at the 8% range. And you are going to see more in the third and the fourth quarter. We think that a fairly large portion of the portfolio will be rolling off, but we also believe that some remaining portion of the portfolio will be rolling off in the first and the second quarter. As we told you before, we do not have a schedule from Chase so we don’t really know. This is all our own internal projections. And as we’re having in these earnings calls, we’ll update you. Moshe Katri – Cowen & Co: And anything on yield or margin impacts?

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

On the yield, I think you should see some relatively same yields that you saw over the last couple of years. I think you should see very similar yields development going forward. There is not going to be too much of a difference.

Ajay Banga

President

Yes, remember our yield is comprised of many different things. It’s just not just one client, even if they are a decent sized one. It’s all to do with geography. It has to do with mix of products. It has to do with mix of clients. It has to do with so many factors that, trying to isolate that one client’s yield impact on MasterCard’s total. That’s the rat hole you’re going into. Moshe Katri – Cowen & Co: Okay, thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Darrin Peller of Barclays. Please go ahead. Darrin Peller – Barclays Capital: Thanks guys. Trends, I mean even beyond cross-border on the top line look pretty strong, at least versus our estimates. I mean notably the transaction processing line in particular also, I mean it grew. And it grew materially faster than the actual transaction process growth itself again. Just so if you can give us a little more color on sort of what drives that difference? And then secondly, on the other revenue line. Anything that is notable there from the sequential revenue increase?

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

Yes, okay. So first of all from a transaction processing fee point of view, you have a little bit of pricing in there which is by the way coming off in the third quarter, as you have a little bit of the acquisition revenues in there, okay. So while that is not a real driver on the total top line, at some acquisition revenues as in the transaction processing fees. And by the way some of that – some little acquisition revenues is also in the other growth line, but the over revenue growth line is really driven by a couple of factors. One, our Advisors consulting business is doing extremely well. This is the business that is really helping many, many banks as well as merchants around the world to be executing on the projects that they have to execute on. Secondly, you’re seeing our information services business, that is where we are actually doing the data utilization and really helping people to be analyzing some of the things that they would like to do. That is really coming to fruition. And lastly, we are also seeing some very nice growth with Access Prepaid. So for instance, we talked to you last quarter or the quarter before about Qantas. Some of these deals that Access Prepaid are doing are actually going into the line item. Darrin Peller – Barclays Capital: All right. That’s helpful. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Chris Brendler of Stifel. Please go ahead. Chris Brendler – Stifel Nicolaus: Hi, thanks. Good morning. I wanted to ask sort of a large – a broader strategic question on pricing. It seems like you had a little bit of tailwind this quarter that is lapping and sort of gone away next quarter it sounds like. So not much pricing for the rest of this year. But as you look out, and I know you’re always opportunistic, but it seems like one of your largest competitors has been more drawing a line in the sand on pricing. And I was just wondering if that in anyway impacts your thinking and how you view pricing going forward relative to how you use pricing over the last four, five years? Thanks.

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

Well, we have to look at pricing in isolation. Pricing has to be part of the business and we have to be sure in terms of the value that our products develop that we put the right kind of pricing in the market in order to make sure that people are using our products. And from thereon, that is our pricing stats. And that has really not changed over the last few years I would say. So you see so for some years where we have fairly small pricing for some years, we have a little larger pricing. And I don’t think from a strategic point of view, we have seen changes in the market that would lead us to believe that we are changing our thinking on that.

Ajay Banga

President

My view is – by the way just to be clear, the impact of pricing in the second quarter of this year. Yes, there as some impact leftover in the cross-border area, but if you look at our total revenue growth for the quarter, there was very little impact from pricing. Just to be clear. That is there in the first quarter, it was not there in the second quarter. The second part of this is that if you look on our strategy on pricing. Our strategy on pricing is that we effectively look – there is so many lines of pricing in so many countries that people are always looking like Martina said for the opportunity at the right place where the value equation makes sense. I very consciously took pricing off the table as part of our guidance when I came, because I don’t believe that’s the strategy for the company. The strategy for our company to grow our franchise and to grow our revenue, and keep taking some pricing benefits as they come. And that’s what we are doing. And could you talk about how our numbers are doing this quarter or last quarter vis-à-vis any other competitor. I don’t even look at it as a traditional competitor. I look at our growth in the space of how much opportunity there is in our industry. And I think 13% revenue growth is a good place to be. Chris Brendler – Stifel Nicolaus: I agree. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Our next question is from James Friedman of Susquehanna. Please go ahead. James Friedman – Susquehanna Financial Group: Hi, thank you. I wanted to ask about the commercial product. Ajay had alluded to the progress there in some of your prepared remarks. Two questions there. Do you believe you’re taking market share in commercial? And secondly, is it biased more domestically versus internationally? Thank you.

Ajay Banga

President

Hi. So first, I am very glad you use the carefully word, prepared word, prepared. Barbara thinks I don’t follow my prepared remarks and she was making jokes about it before we started the call about my ad living [ph]. So anyway I will remind her of that and I will ask her to talk to you in great detail. Now, the actual commercial product thing. Yes, we are gaining share. We’ve been gaining share for a few years now, two to three years. I actually think there is more opportunities up ahead. If we can keep executing on the hard work that our product teams have done to put together a value process that make sense, and there is more to be done in that space. We are really on a journey on this whole commercial space. I don’t believe MasterCard had adequately worked in this area five, seven years ago. So I think we’re really getting to our right place there. Just [indiscernible], is it biased on the U.S.? Not really. Actually to make sure I answer the question correctly, we are growing in commercial around the world. The U.S. was the one that first jumped on to executing against the improved product quality and using all our tools like Smart Data and Virtual Cards and Purchasing Cards and all those pieces and they worked on it. They now move overseas as well to other regions, but it started in the U.S. The commercial card tends to be used not just domestically but also cross-border, just by nature of the kind of the book it aims at. So it’s got a mix of everything inside there. James Friedman – Susquehanna Financial Group: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Glenn Greene of Oppenheimer. Please go ahead. Glenn Greene – Oppenheimer & Co: Thank you. Good morning. I want to go back to maybe Martina for the pricing, just to clarify the impact in the quarter and going forward. And I realize I guess it was the 4 point benefit on the cross-border, which I guess was a little bit more than I would have thought, but I think more importantly just to sort of make sure we’re on the same page for the back half. Are we fully anniversaried on the cross-border going into 3Q, and should the delta on volume and revenue growth would be something like maybe five points of overall revenue growth and volume growth going into the back half. Is that the right way to think about it?

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

So first of all, we had – yes, the pricing was pretty much in cross-border. I call it as the 4 PPT. That was much lower than what you saw in the first quarter. In the first quarter in that line item, it was actually 10 PPT. And yes, that is anniversarying in the third quarter. So you are not going to see that going forward. And then there was a little bit as I said from a transaction processing fee point of view, but when you look at the overall net revenues and you extrapolate those line items to overall net revenues, overall pricing in the quarter actually was a relatively small, very small contributor. And how you should be thinking about that is, all of these thoughts that we have about pricing roll into what we are saying about 2014, what we see from a net revenue point of view, as well as roll into our long-term performance targets. That’s where we are wrapping it into. Glenn Greene – Oppenheimer & Co: Yes, I was thinking more about you’ve had a delta on the volume and revenue growth negatively because of the strong intra-European volumes?

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

Yes. And you’re going to continue to see that likely, just because when you see the growth of the intra versus the inter-regional volume developing. So Europeans, and the fact that was little bit even has changed when you look versus the year ago volume, Europeans are staying closer to home, both, it looks like from a pleasure point of view as well as from a business point of view. And as long as they stay closer to home, our European cross-border transactions are priced lower than the inter-regional transactions. So that’s where the mix is coming in, and the relative growth of inter-regional versus intra-European numbers impacting those mix. I don’t see that changing for at least a number of quarters to come. Glenn Greene – Oppenheimer & Co: Okay, thank you.

Ajay Banga

President

Let me answer this. It’s just really interesting if you look beyond this a little bit and to understand what’s going with the Europeans for example or other – if you look at all our data on which are the hottest travel places around the world, you’ve got London, you’ve got Bangkok, you’ve got Paris and cities like that. If you look at that data, tourism into Southeast Asia has been impacted over the last six, eight months because you’ve had some unrest in Thailand, you’ve got problems in Vietnam with the Chinese situation. You’ve got people canceling trips into that part of the world. It’s similar inside Russia for all the obvious reasons that we’ve been talking about. So what’s happening also I think in this last quarter or two, is that people are staying closer to where they are comfortable, and the Europeans in particular are relatively intrepid travelers outside. They have been – and they travel frequently. They take a few holidays a year, in case you sort of look at how many holidays the Europeans do get in their course of the year, they have cut back as Martina is laughing at me. She is half German, half French. So they take the most holidays in the world. But the fact is that if you sort of look at what’s going on there, there is a genuine difference right now in the way people are traveling. It just is – and that’s an addition to what’s going on with the China where you can see the impact of a change in policies and growth on the ground to what’s happening to cross-border volume and trade outside of China. So this is something you’ve seen. Having said that, I think we have a pretty strong transaction growth rate in our cross-border, and we do a lot of work to make that happen, both from share, but also the kind of work we do with issuers and merchants to make that work in the right way.

Barbara Gasper

Head of Investor Relations

Christine, I think we have time for one last question.

Operator

Operator

Okay. Our last question is from Bob Napoli of William Blair. Please go ahead. Bob Napoli – William Blair: Thank you. Good morning. Martina, did I hear you suggest a tax inversion, but my real question was…

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

Not really, but we like to align our tax footprint to our business structure, given that most of our revenues and profits are still rolling up into the U.S. and into Belgium, which are high tax countries, but 60% of our business is really in many other jurisdictions. Bob Napoli – William Blair: Right, okay. But my real question was…

Ajay Banga

President

No tax inversion. Bob Napoli – William Blair: Okay. With the changes in technology with the EMV, higher focus on security. Do you think that – has MasterCard benefited – do you think you’re gaining some market share head-to-head when it comes down to bigger focus on technology?

Ajay Banga

President

I don’t know. I do know that we’ve put a lot of effort in the space on both innovation and technology. Look at MasterPass. I consider MasterPass to be the wallet part of it. There is more to come. As I said, it’s an old platform. And the fact that we’re live in more countries that we’ve actually got tens of thousands of merchant signed up that we’ve got some momentum on the ground in terms of MasterPass being both an online and in-app and a physical space play. And the fact that it was designed in a way that allows banks and merchants to integrate very easily, much easier than many competing wallets. All of that’s helping us when we go to sell. The focus on security is helping us when we go to sell. But I don’t know that I could pick one of those and tell you that a client or merchant or a bank or a government is turning business to me just because of that. I actually don’t think that anybody thinks so single patterned way. It’s always a very complicated discussion. It always has pricing built into it as you know, but also always has all these other aspects. And I think all I am trying to do in the company, what we are doing is to assemble a portfolio of assets there the security part, the EMV part, the innovation part, the loyalty and rewards, the processing. That’s why you’re seeing us invest in those areas. That’s where our organic and inorganic money is going. It’s going into those very specific areas, because we think they help us build a portfolio to go top line [ph], and that’s what we’re trying to do. Bob Napoli – William Blair: Thank you.

Ajay Banga

President

That was it? Last question done. Back to me. Okay. Closing remarks I guess. So we delivered strong results for the first half of 2014 in spite of this mixed economic environment. And we are focused on delivering yet another good year. We have worked through the regulatory challenges in Russia and Europe. We’ve got a track record of managing through these situations in other markets. Every situation is different, but we have managed our way. We feel confident we will be able to navigate our way through these most recent one results. On the other side of this, we see many opportunities around the world that kind of provides some balances to these challenges we talk about. We’re investing in new technologies I was just telling Bob, and other services, both organically and through acquisitions including our recent transactions in the loyalty, processing, person-to-person and mobile spaces. As Martina mentioned, that pace of M&A activity has accelerated recently. There is a shortage of growth opportunities in our business frankly. And while our investments are having an impact on our OpEx right now, we believe that we are investing in a thoughtful way that ensures continued top line growth and good long-term return for all of you who invest in our stock. I am hoping many of you will be able to join us at one of our Investor Days in September either in St. Louis or in Dublin, where you will have a chance to hear more about our strategic focus areas and you can get to touch and feel some of our innovative products and services. Thank you for your continued support to the company. And thank you for being on our call today.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And thank you ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today’s conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.