Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach thinks it will be a merry holiday season despite fears of a U.S. recession.
"Currently, based on the data that we we have, there is no such indication [of a recession]," Miebach told Yahoo Finance Presents in an exclusive interview (video above). "The consumer is resilient, and that resilience will last. We have no indication that there is a near-term recession."
Miebach's comments on a recession echo what rival CEO Stephen Squeri at American Express recently told Yahoo Finance: "We're not seeing any changes in consumer spending."
Mastercard's economic forecasters have backed up their boss' views going into the final months of a year that has been highlighted by a bear market in stocks and rising interest rates.
The payments giant said in mid-September it sees U.S. retail sales rising 7.1% year over year for the holiday season.
Discretionary items such as apparel and luxury goods are expected to be hot sellers this holiday season, Mastercard said. Both sales in physical stores and online are forecast to rise.
"We don't see any near term changes in consumer overall spending levels, Miebach added.
The resilience in consumer spending showed up in Mastercard's better than expected third quarter.
Excluding the impact of the stronger U.S. dollar, third quarter sales rose 23% from a year ago. Gross dollar volume improved 11% from a year ago.
Execs told analysts on a conference call that U.S. switched volume — a key measure of demand —rose 12% year over year through late October. The figure was steady relative to third quarter levels.
"We reiterate outperform rating and top pick, driven by Mastercard's highly differentiated value-added services and greater exposure to high growth emerging regions, boding well for its services revenue, cross border volume fees and transaction processing fees from more higher-yielding cross-border transactions as global travel continues to recover," Evercore ISI analyst David Togut wrote in a note to clients.
Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.
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