* Card processor affirms no more than 1.5 mln accounts
breached
* Executives discuss loss of credit card numbers in
conference call
* Q3 EPS $0.83 ex-items vs Wall St view $0.84
* Q3 rev up 17 pct
* Shares down 3.5 percent
April 2 (Reuters) – Global Payments Inc will not
know for weeks the cost of a cyber theft revealed Friday,
executives of the credit card payment processor said, but they
stood by their earlier estimate that no more than 1.5 million
cardholder account numbers were compromised in the data breach.
The comments came on Monday as the company reported
quarterly earnings that just missed analysts’ estimates due to
higher expenses. Its shares fell more than 3 percent in morning
trading after dropping 9 percent on Friday.
Executives said it would be weeks before they could estimate
the impact of the break-in on coming financial results. They
repeated their statement from Sunday that the data breach was
confined to North America and affected no more than 1.5 million
credit cards, a figure considerably less than some analysts had
feared.
“We have a high degree of confidence in that number,” Chief
Executive Officer Paul Garcia said in a conference call with
stock analysts after the earnings report.
The Atlanta-based company posted net income of $57.92
million, or 73 cents per share, for the third quarter ended Feb.
29, compared with $47.78 million, or 59 cents per share, a year
earlier.
Revenue rose 17 percent to $533.5 million.
Excluding items, Global Payments earned 83 cents a share.
Analysts on average were expecting 84 cents a share on revenue
of $529.3 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Global Payments said on Friday that it had found
“unauthorized access” into its system early in March.
Payment network operators MasterCard Inc, Visa Inc
, American Express and Discover Financial Services
have confirmed they were affected, which could expose
their cardholders to fraudulent charges.
Visa has dropped Global Payments from its list of approved
service providers.
Global Payments is one of dozens of companies that operate
along the payment-processing chain. They are targeted by hackers
because of the vast amount of sensitive financial information
they handle.
The company backed its revenue and earnings outlook for the
year.
Shares of Global Payments were down 3.5 percent at $45.80 in
morning trading.
