Visa reported numbers on Tuesday night, its third-quarter revenue growth fell slightly short of Wall Street targets, marking a rare miss for the world's largest payments processor. The company's shares dropped 4% on Wednesday. The last time Visa missed on revenue was in 2021 when travel had stalled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Visa reported an impressive quarterly net revenue of $8.90 billion, up 10% year-on-year. Chief Financial Officer Chris Suh noted that while growth in high-spend consumers remained stable, there was a slight moderation in spending among lower-end consumers, mostly due to high interest rates.

Visa Direct, a platform that allows customers to move money across countries, saw the strongest growth. Worldwide card spending increased by 4.9% year-over-year. In the US, which accounts for approximately 40% of Visa's revenue, spending grew by 5.1%.

Visa's payments volume rose 7% on a constant dollar basis, and cross-border volumes excluding transactions within Europe increased by 14%, indicating strong international travel demand. Growth in Asia-Pacific payment volumes was tepid. This is not unexpected, given the difficulties in that region.

The good news is that Visa hasn't changed its outlook as it expects net revenue growth in the "low double-digit" percentages for the next quarter, consistent with last year's 10.6%. The company also reaffirmed its annual profit and revenue growth forecasts.

We are confident that Visa will continue to grow as more people swipe their cards when they travel. This company deserves to be an anchor position in every long-term portfolio.

It's Friday again, so here goes. A clear conscience, a healthy body, a good home life and a successful career are all things that cannot be bought. They must be earned, over time.

Good personal outcomes require a long period of making small, positive decisions. Go for that run. Make that difficult call. Answer those last-minute emails. Perhaps more importantly, they require a long period of avoiding negative moves. Don't wolf down that greasy toasted cheese sandwich. Don't procrastinate. Don't make enemies in the workplace.

The most rewarding things in life come from slow, steady compounding. Focus on regular application of the basics - exercising, sleeping, healthy eating, being kind, and being diligent.

It's been estimated that around $5.4 billion was lost from the CrowdStrike outage according to Axios. On average, affected companies lost around $43.6 million each. The healthcare sector took the biggest hit, forgoing business of around $1.9 billion, while airlines gave up about $850 million in revenue. Sadly it seems that only around 20% of these lost sales were insured.

It is a strong reminder of how connected we are in this day and age. It also shows how important CrowdStrike is to that ecosystem. A compliment but also a curse when something goes wrong.

We are still monitoring the situation closely. It is not yet clear whether there will be substantial lawsuits to deal with. We remain committed shareholders.

Have you watched the HBO series Succession? It is great, and worth a watch. The series follows the Roy family, and their media empire, who are loosely based on the Murdochs.

The Murdoch family is more entertaining than the fictional Roy family. The family scion, Rupert Murdoch has been married 5 times and has 6 children, with three different women. There has been a lot of infighting between the heirs.

The latest scrap has Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch on one side, and James, Elisabeth and Prudence Murdoch on the other. The feud is about the trust that controls the family's business interests. At the moment, Rupert has control, and will continue to run the show until he dies. On his death, his four eldest children, Lachlan, James, Elisabeth, and Prudence will get equal voting rights in deciding the direction of the media empire.

A pending court case is about changing the rules of the trust to give Lachlan control on Rupert's death. It seems that the more politically conservative camp is worried that the more moderate camp will want to change the editorial direction of the empire, which would probably be bad for business. Fox news for example has a very particular viewer demographic, which aren't likely to be drawn to more moderate or liberal content.

The whole affair is a reminder of how difficult it is to implement inter-generational transfers. When things are set up, all the siblings are friends and singing from the same hymn sheet. A few decades later, it gets complicated as the parties pull in different directions.

Ethiopia may have 100 000 EVs on the road. But they don't have adequate charging infrastructure - Ethiopian government bans the imports of all non-electric vehicles.

Forming new friendships as an adult is hard. This guy gave himself a month to make one new friend - This should be easy, but it ain't.

Asian markets are mostly higher this morning. Equity benchmarks fell sharply in Taiwan as that bourse reopened after a hurricane. Notable comebacks were made in Hong Kong, India, Japan, mainland China, and South Korea.

In local company news, PPC rose 5.7% on news that the cement maker received approval to sell its 51% stake in Rwandan Cimerwa for $42.5 million. Elsewhere, Anglo reported a 8% drop in revenue, and that it had swung into an interim loss after the miner took a $1.6 billion impairment on Woodsmith Mine based in northern England.

US equity futures edged higher pre-market. The Rand has weakened to around R18.32 to the US Dollar.

The Olympic opening ceremony is today. It's always inspiring to see what the human body can do. Have a good weekend.