Mastercard (MA)
Forward P/E 28.61x is below Mastercard's entire FY2021-25 forward range (30.19-36.62x) and trailing P/E 33.54x sits ~11% below its 10-year mean of 37.83x (SECONDARY), while against the only like-for-like network peer, Visa (26.72x forward), MA is just +7% and cheaper on trailing P/E and P/S. The blended peer median of 12.85x mixes in balance-sheet lenders (COF 8.88x, AXP 16.09x) and a de-rated processor (PYPL 9.60x) and overstates the gap; with revenue growing +14.1% YoY (PRIMARY), the price requires demand continuation, not acceleration.
What would change this label: If net revenue growth falls below ~8% YoY for two consecutive quarters while forward P/E holds above ~28x, the label moves to OVERVALUED; if forward P/E compresses below ~24x with double-digit revenue growth intact, it moves to UNDERVALUED.
Mastercard still costs about 29 times next year's expected earnings, which sounds expensive — but for this company it is actually the cheapest it has been in five years, and it is roughly the same price as Visa, its one true rival. The business keeps growing sales at about 14% a year and turns nearly half of every sales dollar into free cash. The price assumes that steady growth simply continues, which is a reasonable bet — so we call it fairly priced: not a bargain, not a bubble.
Both lines start at 100 on 2020-09-01. Over the full window Mastercard returned +70.87% and the S&P 500 +118.28% (price returns; dividends not reinvested). Worst peak-to-trough fall for Mastercard: -28.6% (2022-02-02 to 2022-10-12). Source: Nasdaq official daily history.
What the label rests on
Forward P/E 28.61x is below Mastercard's entire FY2021-25 forward range (30.19-36.62x) and trailing P/E 33.54x sits ~11% below its 10-year mean of 37.83x (SECONDARY), while against the only like-for-like network peer, Visa (26.72x forward), MA is just +7% and cheaper on trailing P/E and P/S. The blended peer median of 12.85x mixes in balance-sheet lenders (COF 8.88x, AXP 16.09x) and a de-rated processor (PYPL 9.60x) and overstates the gap; with revenue growing +14.1% YoY (PRIMARY), the price requires demand continuation, not acceleration. The company’s forward P/E is 28.6× against a peer median of 12.8×. Its own history: Trailing P/E at year-end (SECONDARY): 2021 40.88x, 2022 33.89x, 2023 35.96x, 2024 37.86x, 2025 34.52x; 10-year mean 37.83x, median 37.24x; current 33.54x. Forward P/E at fiscal year-end: FY21 36.62x, FY22 30.19x, FY23 31.20x, FY24 33.59x, FY25 31.04x; current 28.61x is below the whole five-year forward range.. Sector demand read: Payments demand rising steadily at a double-digit pace — MA's latest quarter (Q/E Jun 2026, PRIMARY) printed net revenue +14.1% YoY and TTM FCF of $16.7B on $35.1B net revenue; secular cash-to-digital migration, mid-cycle, pricing power intact. Latest-quarter sales growth was +14.1% versus a year earlier (SEC filings).
| Company | Price (Oct 27, 2026) | Forward P/E | Trailing P/E |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mastercard (MA) | $609.85 | 28.6× | 33.5× |
| V | $401.86 | 26.7× | 34.5× |
| AXP | $312.91 | 16.1× | 17.6× |
| COF | $203.44 | 8.9× | 12.0× |
| PYPL | $56.09 | 9.6× | 10.7× |
| DFS | — | — | — |
| Peer median | 12.8× |
Multiples: stockanalysis.com (SECONDARY, S&P Global data), fetched Oct 28, 2026. Peer set chosen by sector; the median is the middle value of the set. The label and its numbers were recorded in the programme’s label registry on Oct 28, 2026 and will be scored at 6 and 12 months.
Sales, profit and cash
This company does not report a gross-profit line in its SEC facts (normal for banks, payment networks and some health insurers), so profit is shown as net income instead — gross margin is marked UNVERIFIED-absent rather than estimated.
Free cash flow = cash from operations minus spending on plant and equipment, both from the company’s SEC cash-flow statement. Gaps are quarters where that spending line is not separately tagged in the filings — shown as gaps, never estimated.
| Quarter | Sales | Gross margin | Net income | EPS (GAAP, diluted) | Free cash flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q/E Jun 2026 2026-06-30 | $9.3B | — | $4.4B | 4.97 | $3.5B |
| Q/E Mar 2026 2026-03-31 | $8.4B | — | $3.9B | 4.35 | $2.8B |
| Q/E Dec 2025 2025-12-31 | $8.8B | — | $4.1B | — | $4.9B |
| Q/E Sep 2025 2025-09-30 | $8.6B | — | $3.9B | 4.34 | $5.5B |
| Q/E Jun 2025 2025-06-30 | $8.1B | — | $3.7B | 4.07 | $4.6B |
| Q/E Mar 2025 2025-03-31 | $7.2B | — | $3.3B | 3.59 | $2.2B |
| Q/E Dec 2024 2024-12-31 | $7.5B | — | $3.3B | — | $4.7B |
| Q/E Sep 2024 2024-09-30 | $7.4B | — | $3.3B | 3.53 | $5.0B |
| Q/E Jun 2024 2024-06-30 | $7.0B | — | $3.3B | 3.50 | $3.0B |
| Q/E Mar 2024 2024-03-31 | $6.3B | — | $3.0B | 3.22 | $1.5B |
| Q/E Dec 2023 2023-12-31 | $6.5B | — | $2.8B | — | $4.1B |
| Q/E Sep 2023 2023-09-30 | $6.5B | — | $3.2B | 3.39 | $3.1B |
The last twelve reported quarters. Full 24-quarter history sits in the data pack behind this page. A dash means the figure is not tagged as a standalone quarter in the company’s SEC facts (the usual case is the fourth quarter, which many companies only report inside the full-year filing) — it is missing, not zero.
Earnings: getting better or worse?
Each box is one quarter’s earnings per share (EPS). Green means EPS was higher than the same quarter a year earlier; red means lower; a dash means the figure is not tagged in the filings.
Basis: GAAP diluted EPS from SEC company facts, compared with the same quarter a year earlier.
Key facts
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Company (legal name in filings) | Mastercard Inc |
| Chief executive | Michael Miebach (source: Mastercard Newsroom executive bio (company site): 'Michael Miebach is chief executive officer of Mastercard and a member of its board of directors' (CEO since January 2021 per Wikipedia), fetched Oct 28, 2026 — https://www.mastercard.com/sg/en/news-and-trends/press/executive-bios/michael-miebach.html) |
| Sector | Financials — Payments — card networks |
| Share price (Oct 27, 2026) | $609.85 |
| Market value (market cap) | $538.5B — share price times shares outstanding of 883,000,000 (SEC filings; SEC EDGAR WeightedAverageNumberOfDilutedSharesOutstanding (latest quarter; dei EntityCommonStockSharesOutstanding series is stale for this filer)) |
| Sales, last twelve months | $35.1B |
| Net income, last twelve months | $16.3B |
| Free cash flow, last twelve months | $16.7B |
| Latest reported quarter | Q/E Jun 2026 (of 24 quarters in the data pack) |
| Six-year price return vs S&P 500 | +70.87% vs +118.28% |
| Worst peak-to-trough fall | -28.6% (2022-02-02 to 2022-10-12) |
What we could not verify
- Gross profit / gross margin: not tagged as a standalone line in this company's EDGAR company facts (common for banks, payment networks and some healthcare payers) — shown as UNVERIFIED-absent; the page charts revenue and net income instead.
- TTM GAAP diluted EPS could not be summed from company facts because at least one of the last four quarters (typically Q4) has no standalone tagged EPS; trailing P/E is therefore taken from the labelled secondary source in valuation_label.md.
- TTM GAAP diluted EPS could not be summed from SEC EDGAR company facts (standalone Q4 EPS is not tagged); trailing P/E is SECONDARY (stockanalysis.com).
- DFS (Discover Financial Services) multiples are null: DFS was acquired by Capital One and delisted on May 19, 2025, so no current market multiples exist; it is excluded from the peer median rather than estimated. The stockanalysis.com DFS page's residual quote data belongs to an unrelated UK listing and was excluded.
- Own-history P/E: the US listing's stockanalysis.com ratio-history page did not expose the price-ratio block in today's fetch; trailing history is from fullratio.com cross-checked vs companiesmarketcap.com, forward history from stockanalysis.com's ratio history for the BMV duplicate listing — all SECONDARY, agreeing on range/direction but differing by up to ~1x on individual year-ends.
- Forward P/E, peer multiples, PEG, margins and the EPS growth forecast are aggregator SECONDARY (stockanalysis.com / S&P Global unless noted), fetched Oct 28, 2026; the consensus EPS build behind the forward P/E was not independently re-derived.
- Guidance record (each quarter scored against the guidance the company gave the quarter before) is not yet compiled for this company — it is a Phase 2 layer. The earnings strip below therefore uses reported EPS versus a year earlier, which is fully sourced from filings.
The IT factor — the most exciting thing the market is overlooking — is not assessed on an X-Ray page. It belongs to the Deep Dive (Phase 2), where it gets the evidence standard it needs. Leadership-era scoring (the six years split by chief executive) is likewise a Phase 2 layer; this page names the current chief executive only, from a sourced profile.
Sources
- SEC EDGAR submissions — Filing index; company legal name.
https://data.sec.gov/submissions/CIK0001141391.json - SEC EDGAR company facts — Quarterly financial spine: revenue, gross profit, net income, GAAP diluted EPS, operating cash flow, PP&E capex, buybacks, dividends, diluted shares.
https://data.sec.gov/api/xbrl/companyfacts/CIK0001141391.json - Nasdaq official daily history — Daily closes for the company; SPY (assetclass=etf) saved as raw/nasdaq_spy_raw.json over identical dates.
https://api.nasdaq.com/api/quote/MA/historical?assetclass=stocks - Valuation multiples and peer figures — stockanalysis.com (SECONDARY, S&P Global data), fetched Oct 28, 2026; see valuation_label.md in the data pack.
Conventions: earliest-filed value per period, as first reported; cash-flow years-to-date differenced quarter by quarter; EPS never differenced; free cash flow = operating cash flow minus plant-and-equipment spending. This page is a dated snapshot — updates are new versions, never silent edits.