Mastercard Incorporated MA recently announced the opening of the European Cyber Resilience Center (“ECRC”) in a bid to fuel collaboration between public and private sectors, and combat cybercrime. This move is aimed at improving resilience and fighting cyber threats in Europe and Belgium.
The new center will enhance defense systems against cyber threats, improve response times and serve as an epicenter of leadership in cybersecurity. In today's interconnected world, cybercrime poses a significant challenge to organizations across sectors.
With the rise of digitalization and increased connectivity, fraudsters are employing more sophisticated methods, thereby creating a global cybercrime economy, worth approximately trillions of euros. Hence, through its new center, MA seeks to enhance collaboration with national cyber intelligence centers, law enforcement agencies and industry bodies throughout Europe.
This move bodes well as it should enhance Mastercard’s ability to detect and respond to cyber-attacks. Investments in cybersecurity infrastructure are likely to help retain the company’s financial institution clients and therefore, poise the company well for the future. Moreover, Mastercard is likely to be protected from significant financial losses from cyber-attacks.
Given the increasing risk of cybercrimes, investment in cybersecurity is of dire need. Hence, the establishment of ECRC will act as a key differentiator in the company’s services.
Mastercard prioritizes high standards of cybersecurity and data responsibility to protect customers’ transactions, which enabled the protection of the 143 billion transactions that the company processed in 2023. This further signifies the timeliness of the latest move. Such strategies should help MA achieve its net revenue growth objective in the low-end of low double-digits in 2024.
Price Movements
Shares of Mastercard have risen 18.7% in the past year compared with the industry’s 17% growth.
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Zacks Rank & Key Picks
Mastercard currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the broader Business Services space are Global Payments Inc. GPN, Paysafe Limited PSFE and WEX Inc. WEX, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Global Payments’ 2024 earnings is currently pegged at $11.63 per share, indicating 11.6% year-over-year growth. The company beat on earnings in each of the past four quarters, delivering an average surprise of 1.1%. The consensus mark for GPN’s 2024 revenues is pegged at $9.2 billion, implying a 6.4% increase from the year-ago level.
The consensus estimate for Paysafe’s current-year earnings is pegged at $2.47 per share, indicating 6% year-over-year growth. The company beat on earnings in three of the trailing four quarters and missed once, delivering an average surprise of 18.3%. The consensus mark for PSFE’s 2024 revenues is pinned at $1.7 billion, indicating a 6.5% increase from the year-ago level.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for WEX’s 2024 earnings of $16.26 per share indicates 9.8% year-over-year growth. The company beat on earnings in three of the trailing four quarters and missed the same in one, delivering an average surprise of 3.3%. The consensus estimate for WEX’s current-year revenues is pegged at $2.7 billion, indicating a 7.6% increase from the year-ago level.
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