Visa's annual report on Form 10-K, filed November 5, 2026 for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2026, closes a year in which the company's operating income and net income both moved higher from the third quarter to the fourth. The filing's income statement data shows full-year operating income of $28.11 billion and net income of $23.50 billion. The useful question for a long-term reader is less the annual totals than how the year built toward them, and where the gap between operating profit and the bottom line came from.
The quarterly path into year-end
The fourth quarter was the strongest quarter of the fiscal year on operating income. According to the reported quarterly figures, operating income rose to $7.26 billion in the fourth quarter from $6.88 billion in the third, an increase of about $385 million. Net income rose to $6.00 billion from $5.63 billion, an increase of about $374 million. Operating income in the fourth quarter also edged past the second quarter's $7.23 billion, which had been the prior high. Net income, however, remained a touch below the second quarter's $6.02 billion.
| FY2026 quarter | Operating income | Pre-tax income | Income tax expense | Net income |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 (Dec. 31, 2025) | $6.74B | $6.73B | $0.87B | $5.85B |
| Q2 (Mar. 31, 2026) | $7.23B | $7.17B | $1.15B | $6.02B |
| Q3 (June 30, 2026) | $6.88B | $6.83B | $1.21B | $5.63B |
| Q4 (Sept. 30, 2026) | $7.26B | $7.36B | $1.36B | $6.00B |
| Full fiscal year 2026 | $28.11B | $28.09B | $4.59B | $23.50B |
From operating income to net income
The walk from operating income to net income runs through two lines: non-operating items and income tax. In fiscal 2026 the company reported non-operating items that were nearly neutral for the year, a net charge of $17 million. Interest expense was $758 million for the year, up from $589 million in fiscal 2025 as reported in the prior-year 10-K, while other non-operating income was $741 million, compared with $789 million a year earlier. The result is that interest cost was a drag on pre-tax income, and other non-operating income largely offset it.
The quarterly pattern is more revealing. Interest expense ran between $178 million and $194 million in each quarter, so it was a steady drag rather than a source of volatility. Other non-operating income ranged from $118 million in the second quarter to $290 million in the fourth. That fourth-quarter figure is what turned non-operating items positive, to a net gain of $98 million, after a net charge of $44 million in the third quarter. In other words, a meaningful share of the fourth-quarter pre-tax step-up came from below the operating line, not from operations alone. The company did not disclose the drivers of that other income line in the figures reported for the year, so the reader should treat that portion of the quarter's improvement as less certain to recur than operating income.
Income tax expense is the other line that matters for conversion. It rose through the year, from $873 million in the first quarter to $1.36 billion in the fourth. Pre-tax income rose about $527 million sequentially from the third quarter to the fourth, but net income rose about $374 million, because tax expense increased by $153 million. That is why fourth-quarter net income of $6.00 billion sat slightly below the second quarter's $6.02 billion even though operating income reached a new high.
What the full-year figures say about profitability
On the reported figures, Visa converted a large operating profit into a large net profit in fiscal 2026, with the gap between the two made up almost entirely of income tax. Pre-tax income of $28.09 billion, less tax of $4.59 billion, yields the $23.50 billion net income reported for the year. Non-operating items were not a material factor at the annual level, though they mattered in individual quarters.
For context, the company reported total revenue from contracts with customers of $45.90 billion for fiscal 2026, compared with $40.00 billion for fiscal 2025. Readers who want the full year-over-year comparison of operating income and net income against fiscal 2025 should consult the company's 10-K directly.
The points a value-oriented reader is likely to weigh are these. First, the fourth quarter showed that operating profit can keep stepping up through the year-end period. Second, interest expense is a fixed and visible cost that rose over the year but remained a small share of the operating profit base. Third, the bottom line is sensitive to the tax line and to non-operating items, and both moved enough in the fourth quarter to change how the quarter's improvement reads. Whether those patterns persist into fiscal 2027 is a question the company's next filings will answer; the figures above describe what the fiscal 2026 record shows and nothing beyond it.