How the credit card giant spent $14 billion in revenue over the past 12 months.

1. Visa's Billions
How the credit card giant spends its revenue

2. $14billionVisa's revenue (ttm)

3. $14.3
billion
$14.0
billion
$13.9
billion
South SudanVisaChad
If Visa were a country...

4. The S&P 500 Companies, Ranked by Revenue
Visa:
176th
$500
Billion

5. Not all of this falls to the bottom line.

6. 35%
Where does Visa's revenue go?
$14
Billion
Expenses ate up $4.9 billion.$4.9 billion

7. Where does Visa's revenue go?
35%
19%
$14
Billion
Taxes accounted for another $2.7 billion.$2.7 billion

8. Where does Visa's revenue go?
35%
19%
46%
$14
Billion
Leaving net income of $6.4 billion

9. Where does Visa's revenue go?
35%
19%
9%
46%
$14
Billion
From this, it paid dividends totaling $1.2 billion

10. Where does Visa's revenue go?
35%
19%
9%
21%
46%
$14
Billion
And bought back common stock worth $3 billion

11. Where does Visa's revenue go?
35%
19%
9%
21%
16%
46%
$14
Billion
And retained the rest…

12. Interesting
observations2

13. 65%
Visa's pretax
operating margin
(ttm)
17%
Median pretax operating
margin of the 100 biggest
S&P 500 companies (ttm)
First, Visa has incredibly wide profit margins. Its
operating margin over the past 12 months was 65%.
That's 3.8 times wider than the typical large cap stock!

14. -100%
0%
100%
200%
300%
400%
500%
600%
2008 2010 2012 2014
Visa's
stock
S&P 500
Which, second,
helps explain…

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