Visa fiscal fourth quarter 2026 earnings explained: revenue lines, EPS and valuation multiples

Visa reported results for its fiscal fourth quarter of 2026 on October 27, 2026. Visa's fiscal year ends on September 30, so this quarter covers July, August and September 2026 and closes out fiscal 2026. Net revenue rose 4.3% from the fiscal third quarter and GAAP net income rose 6.6% (Dalsna Finance calculation). Against the same quarter a year earlier Visa reported net revenue up 13% and GAAP net income up 18%. This article walks through what Visa does, where its revenue comes from and what the numbers say about its valuation. Every figure is sourced and dated, and every number worked out by us is labelled as a Dalsna Finance calculation. ^[1][2]

Visa in brief

Visa Inc. is based in San Francisco and its class A shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker V. It describes itself as a world leader in digital payments, connecting consumers, sellers, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories. In its release chief executive Ryan McInerney said "Visa delivered a milestone year." ^[1]

Visa reports one segment, which it calls Payment Services, because it says all significant operating decisions are based on analysis of Visa as a single global business. It also sells what it calls value added services, and its quarterly report for the three months to June 30, 2026 put their growth from a year earlier primarily down to growth in Issuing Solutions, Acceptance Solutions and Advisory and Other Services. On the earnings call McInerney said value added services revenue grew 30% in constant dollars to $14 billion in fiscal 2026, as reported by Zacks. On August 3, 2026 Visa agreed to buy BioCatch, a fraud intelligence company, for $2.4 billion in cash. The deal is subject to customary closing conditions, including applicable regulatory approvals, and Visa expects it to close by the end of its fiscal second quarter of 2027. ^[3][4][1]

Where the revenue comes from

Visa splits its revenue into four lines and then subtracts client incentives to arrive at net revenue. Service revenue is recognized on payments volume from the quarter before, so the fourth quarter's $5,255 million reflects spending from April to June 2026, which Visa said grew 10% from a year earlier in constant dollars. Data processing revenue was $6,245 million. In its quarterly report for the three months to June 30, 2026, Visa said this line grew from a year earlier primarily due to growth in processed transactions, select pricing modifications, growth in value added services and a higher cross border transaction mix. Visa processed 74.2 billion transactions in the quarter, up 10% from a year earlier, against 71.7 billion in the fiscal third quarter. International transaction revenue, $4,115 million, is driven by cross border volume, which Visa said rose 14% in constant dollars excluding transactions within Europe. Other revenue was $1,647 million. ^[1][2][3]

Client incentives grew faster than revenue. They rose 9.5% from the fiscal third quarter to $5,123 million (Dalsna Finance calculation) and Visa reported them up 21% from a year earlier. On the call chief financial officer Christopher Suh said incentives support long term client relationships and that their growth is expected to accelerate, a company projection as reported by Zacks. Payments volume for July to September 2026 grew 9% from a year earlier in constant dollars, as reported. Visa gives payments volume growth rates in its release but not the dollar amount, so this article does not show one. In its quarterly report for the three months to June 30, 2026, Visa said value added services revenue is recognized within data processing, other and service revenue, and was $3.8 billion in that quarter. ^[1][2][3][4]

The numbers, quarter over quarter

Net revenue was $12,139 million in the fiscal fourth quarter, against $11,633 million in the third. Operating expenses rose more slowly, to $4,877 million from $4,756 million, so operating income rose 5.6% to $7,262 million. Net income under GAAP, the standard US accounting rules, rose to $6,002 million from $5,628 million (Dalsna Finance calculation for the changes). Zacks reported adjusted EPS of $3.48 against the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $3.43, and revenue of $12.14 billion against a $12.08 billion estimate. ^[1][2][4]

Profit margin is net income as a share of net revenue: 49.4% in the fourth quarter against 48.4% in the third (Dalsna Finance calculation: $6,002 million divided by $12,139 million, and $5,628 million divided by $11,633 million). The operating margin, operating income divided by net revenue, was 59.8% against 59.1%. Visa reported an effective tax rate of 18.5% for the quarter, against 17.6% in the third quarter. ^[1][2]

Visa also reports non GAAP, or adjusted, net income, which leaves out items it says are not representative of its continuing operations. In the fourth quarter it left out a $469 million litigation provision for the interchange multidistrict litigation, $282 million for investments donated to the Visa Foundation, a $37 million deferred tax expense from a change in US taxation of certain foreign earnings, $155 million of net gains on equity investments and $75 million of amortization of acquired intangible assets and acquisition related costs, each with its tax effect. The third quarter left out $563 million of severance costs and a $237 million litigation provision, among other items. Adjusted net income was $6,552 million in the fourth quarter and $6,296 million in the third. ^[1][2]

Earnings per share

Earnings per share, or EPS, is profit divided by the number of shares. Visa states EPS for its class A shares on a fully diluted basis, which counts its other share classes as if they had been converted into class A shares and also counts shares that could be created from stock awards. Visa reported diluted GAAP EPS of $3.19 for the fourth quarter and $2.97 for the third. Its adjusted EPS, which uses non GAAP net income, was $3.48 and $3.32. Dividing each net income figure by the weighted average diluted class A share count gives the same figures to the cent. ^[1][2][3]

Against a year earlier Visa reported GAAP EPS up 22% and adjusted EPS up 17%. The diluted share count fell to 1,882 million from 1,945 million a year earlier, and part of the gap between EPS growth and net income growth is that lower share count (Dalsna Finance reading). Visa repurchased about 11 million class A shares in the fourth quarter for $4.0 billion and about 61 million over fiscal 2026 for $20.5 billion, and it had $24.4 billion of repurchase authorization left at September 30, 2026. ^[1]

What the market values Visa at

Market capitalization, or market cap, is what the stock market values the whole company at: the share price times the number of shares. Visa's class A shares closed at $413.59 on Friday, October 30, 2026, as reported by StockAnalysis. Visa has more than one class of stock, and its class B and class C shares and its preferred stock convert into class A shares at set rates. After a September 18, 2026 adjustment the three class B conversion rates ranged from 1.4773 to 1.5400 class A shares for each class B share, so simply adding up the shares of each class would undercount the company. Visa's latest quarterly report gives 1,880 million shares on an as converted class A basis at June 30, 2026. That gives a market cap of about $777.5 billion (Dalsna Finance calculation). ^[6][3][5]

That count is one quarter old. Since June 30 Visa has bought back about 11 million class A shares, and the September 18 escrow deposit cut the as converted class B count by about 1.1 million shares. Visa's earnings release does not give an as converted total for September 30. For comparison, the weighted average diluted class A share count for the fourth quarter was 1,882 million. Every multiple and share price below uses the 1,880 million count. ^[1][5][3]

Six valuation multiples

The price to earnings ratio, or P/E, is market cap divided by a year of earnings. It shows how many dollars the market is paying for each dollar of yearly profit. Annualised means one quarter multiplied by four. On that basis Visa has a P/E of 32.4 (Dalsna Finance calculation: $777.5 billion divided by $6,002 million times 4, which is $24,008 million). The adjusted P/E uses non GAAP net income instead: $6,552 million times 4 is $26,208 million, which gives 29.7 (Dalsna Finance calculation). ^[1][6][3]

A forward P/E uses an estimate of future earnings. TIKR reported on October 26, 2026, the day before the results, that the consensus of 40 analysts for fiscal 2027 normalized EPS is $15.02. Fiscal 2027 runs from October 2026 to September 2027, so none of its quarters had been reported when the estimate was made. TIKR puts fiscal 2025 normalized EPS at $11.47, the same as Visa's reported non GAAP EPS for fiscal 2025, so we treat the estimate as an adjusted figure. Multiplying it by the same 1,880 million shares gives estimated earnings of about $28,238 million and a forward adjusted P/E of 27.5 (Dalsna Finance calculation on an estimate, analyst consensus as reported by TIKR). We found no published GAAP estimate, so there is no forward GAAP P/E. ^[7][1][6][3]

A trailing P/E, sometimes called a historical P/E, uses the last four reported quarters. Because those four quarters make up Visa's fiscal year, the trailing figures are Visa's reported fiscal 2026 totals: GAAP net income of $23,504 million, which gives a trailing P/E of 33.1, and non GAAP net income of $25,314 million, which gives a trailing adjusted P/E of 30.7 (Dalsna Finance calculation for both). ^[1][6][3]

The last four quarters

Visa's fourth quarter release shows GAAP net income for each quarter of fiscal 2026, and the four add up to the $23,504 million it reports for the year. Its releases give non GAAP net income for the third and fourth quarters and for the year, and its second quarter release gives the second quarter and the first six months. The first quarter's non GAAP figure, $6,124 million, is worked out as the six month total of $12,466 million minus the second quarter's $6,342 million (Dalsna Finance calculation). The four non GAAP quarters then add up to the $25,314 million Visa reports for the year. ^[1][2][8]

Two base cases: the fourth quarter held flat for a year

Suppose net revenue stayed at the fourth quarter's level for a full year, with no growth and no decline: $12,139 million times 4, or $48,556 million. The first base case keeps the 49.4% GAAP profit margin, which gives earnings of $24,008 million, or $12.77 per share on the 1,880 million share count. The second keeps the 54.0% adjusted profit margin, which gives $26,208 million, or $13.94 per share. Each case is simply the latest quarter annualised, so the GAAP case at the annualised P/E and the adjusted case at the annualised adjusted P/E both return the October 30, 2026 close of $413.59 by construction. The other cells only show how the price moves when the same earnings are given a different multiple. ^[1][6][3]

We do not add a case on the operating margin. Visa's non operating items were small in the quarter, a net $98 million, and the adjusted case already leaves out the $155 million of equity investment gains, the litigation provision, the Visa Foundation donation and the deferred tax expense that Visa itself named. There is no forward GAAP P/E, so the grid has five multiples, not six. ^[1]

What to watch

On the earnings call Suh gave an outlook for fiscal 2027, as reported by Zacks. He projected adjusted net revenue growth in the low double digits and adjusted EPS growth in the low double digits to low teens. Adjusted operating expenses are expected to grow in the low double digits, modestly below revenue. He expected first quarter revenue growth in the low double digits and EPS growth at the low end of the mid teens, and management expects about 25% of payments volume to come up for contract renewal in fiscal 2027, against 20% in fiscal 2026. These are the company's own expectations, as reported. The next report, for the three months to December 31, 2026, will show whether client incentives keep growing faster than revenue. ^[4]

Litigation remains a cost to follow. Visa recorded litigation provisions of $1,764 million in fiscal 2026, and its accrued litigation was $990 million at September 30, 2026, against $3,033 million a year earlier. Its quarterly report for the period to June 30, 2026 says the court granted preliminary approval on June 9, 2026 to the amended settlement Visa and Mastercard reached with the Injunctive Relief Class in the interchange multidistrict litigation, and that the plaintiffs asked for final approval on July 15, 2026. On September 18, 2026 Visa authorized a $405 million deposit into its US litigation escrow account, which lowers the number of class A shares its class B shares convert into. ^[1][3][5]

How these figures were made: inputs come from Visa's earnings releases for the second, third and fourth quarters of fiscal 2026, its quarterly report for the period to June 30, 2026 and its September 2026 current report on SEC EDGAR, plus the dated closing price, the dated estimate report and the dated call report named above. Calculations use unrounded inputs and are rounded only at the end, with multiples to one decimal and per share figures and prices to the cent. ^{[1][2][8][3][5][6][7][4]}