Headlines:
Global Payments' Profits Rise 27% VectorSGI to Use Orbograph Upgrade Corillian, CashEdge Enroll Credit Union
Global Payments' Profits Rise 27%
The merchant payment processor Global Payments Inc. reported strong earnings for its fiscal first quarter and raised its guidance, citing increased business in North America and its money-transfer operations in Europe.
Earnings rose 27%, to $30.7 million. Revenue for the three months, which ended Aug. 31, was $224.5 million, besting the year-earlier period by 17%.
The Atlanta company announced the results Thursday. Earlier this month it announced it would form a merchant processing partnership with HSBC Holdings PLC.
Paul Garcia, Global Payments' president and chief executive, said in a conference call with analysts Friday that the deal with the British company would help his company generate more revenue.
"We are very excited about our recently-announced Asia-Pacific joint venture with HSBC," Mr. Garcia said. It "has the potential to become one of the best transactions we've ever completed."
Global raised its revenue guidance for fiscal 2006 to a range of $855 million to $883 million, which would top fiscal 2005 by 9% to 13%. It expects earnings to rise 15% to 20%, to $2.74 to $2.86 a share. In July, when it announced fiscal 2005 results, it predicted fiscal 2006 revenue would increase by 7% to 11%, prompting some concern from Wall Street.
Gregory W. Smith, an analyst with Merrill Lynch Global Securities, wrote in a note issued Friday that the performance shown in the three months that ended Aug. 31 "should suppress any concerns about last quarter's guidance. The company showed no impact from the possible slowdown in consumer spending."
First-quarter earnings "were ahead of even our Street high estimates," he wrote.
VectorSGI to Use Orbograph Upgrade
The check-image software vendor VectorSGI was to announce today that it is incorporating in its image-quality application an upgraded version of check-recognition software from Orbograph.
Vector, a unit of Marshall & Ilsley Corp.'s Metavante Corp. technology subsidiary, and Orbograph, a unit of the Israeli vendor Orbotech Ltd., are demonstrating version 6.3 of the Orbograph software at the 10th annual CheckImage Conference being held this week in Orlando.
Orbograph said it has worked closely with several banks and the Financial Services Technology Consortium on the new version of its software. For the past two years the consortium has been coordinating industry efforts to set standards for check-image quality. Orbograph announced version 6.2 in April. Vector and Orbograph have been working together since last October.
Vector said its Vector: IQA software has been selected by nearly 60% of the large banks that have purchased image quality and usability analysis systems.
Corillian, CashEdge Enroll Credit Union
Mission Federal Credit Union of San Diego has agreed to use a combined online banking and account-to-account transfer software package jointly offered by Corillian Corp. and CashEdge Inc.
Corillian, of Hillsboro, Ore., and CashEdge, of New York, announced last week that the $1.9 billion-asset credit union would use Corillian's Voyager Internet banking platform and CashEdge's TransferNow and EZSendNow transfer services.
TransferNow lets people transfer money among accounts they own at different institutions. EZSendNow lets them initiate automated clearing house payments to other people or to businesses.
The two vendors announced in 2002 that they would combine CashEdge's aggregation software with Corillian's register software to manage the aggregated account information; in 2003 they expanded the agreement to include their online banking and transfer software.
