Discover remains profitable in 1st-quarter
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Discover Financial Services said Thursday it managed to remain profitable during its fiscal first quarter, thanks to a payment from a lawsuit settlement, but it is nevertheless reducing its quarterly dividend.
Without the gain from the lawsuit settlement, the credit-card lender would have had a loss due to rising defaults and delinquencies. Nearly all lenders are seeing more customers stop making their monthly payments as the economy falters and unemployment surges.
The Riverwoods-based company also reduced its quarterly dividend to 2 cents per share, from 6 cents per share, "out of an abundance of caution," Chief Executive David Nelms said in a statement.
The dividend reduction will save it about $80 million a year, the company said.
Discover said it earned $120.4 million, or 25 cents per share, during the quarter ended Feb. 28. A year earlier, it earned $81.2 million, or 17 cents per share.
The company's results were bolstered by a $475 million payment received as part of a $2.75 billion settlement of an antitrust lawsuit with Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. The payment boosted profit by $297 million after taxes. The lawsuit claimed MasterCard and Visa harmed Discover's business by preventing their member banks from issuing credit cards for Discover's network.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, on average, forecast a loss of 16 cents per share for the quarter. Analysts estimates often do not include gains and charges.
Discover's provision for loan losses more than doubled to $1.3 billion. The company's charge-off rate, the percentage of debt it does not expect to be repaid, climbed to 6.48 percent from 5.48 percent in the fourth quarter.
Shares of Discover fell 3 cents to $7.21 in morning trading.
Discover recently became a bank holding company and last week received $1.2 billion from the federal government under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
During the most recent quarter, income from Discover's third party payments business -- which processes ATM and debit transactions and other banks' cards -- rose sharply during the quarter to $28.9 million from $15.5 million during the year-earlier period. The boost was due to the addition of Diners Club International, which was acquired from Citigroup Inc. last year.
Discover's third-party payments business processed $35 billion in transactions during the most recent quarter.
Average total loans during the quarter increased to $51.9 billion from $48.9 billion during the same quarter last year.
Total deposits rose 14 percent to $28 billion.