NEW YORK-Visa post­ed a loss of US$1.8 bil­lion for the April-to-June pe­ri­od on an in­crease in lit­i­ga­tion costs. Ex­clud­ing that ex­pense, Visa's re­sults were much bet­ter than an­a­lysts were ex­pect­ing. Pay­ments proces­sors Visa and Mas­ter­Card, along with a num­ber of ma­jor banks, re­cent­ly set­tled a long­stand­ing le­gal bat­tle against stores over card fees.

Visa, Mas­ter­Card and the banks agreed to pay the re­tail­ers US$6 bil­lion as part of the set­tle­ment. Visa in­creased its lit­i­ga­tion pro­vi­sion by US$4.1 bil­lion, which led the com­pa­ny to post a loss of US$1.8 bil­lion, or US$2.74 per share, for its fis­cal third quar­ter. Ex­clud­ing the pro­vi­sion, Visa's net in­come in the lat­est quar­ter was US$1.1 bil­lion, or US$1.56 per share, beat­ing an­a­lysts' ex­pec­ta­tions of US$1.45 per share ac­cord­ing to da­ta provider Fact­Set. The San Fran­cis­co-based com­pa­ny said its rev­enue grew 10 per cent to US$2.6 bil­lion, com­pared to an­a­lysts' ex­pec­ta­tions of US$2.5 bil­lion.