Leading edge card issuer Marqeta (NASDAQ: MQ) will be announcing earnings results tomorrow afternoon. Here’s what investors should know.

Marqeta met analysts’ revenue expectations last quarter, reporting revenues of $128 million, up 17.5% year on year. It was a strong quarter for the company, with an impressive beat of analysts’ EBITDA estimates and total payment volume in line with analysts’ estimates.

Is Marqeta a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it’s free.

This quarter, analysts are expecting Marqeta’s revenue to grow 11% year on year to $131.9 million, a reversal from the 41.7% decrease it recorded in the same quarter last year. Adjusted loss is expected to come in at -$0.04 per share.

Analysts covering the company have generally reconfirmed their estimates over the last 30 days, suggesting they anticipate the business to stay the course heading into earnings. Marqeta has missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates three times over the last two years.

Looking at Marqeta’s peers in the finance and HR software segment, some have already reported their Q4 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. Paycor delivered year-on-year revenue growth of 13.1%, beating analysts’ expectations by 1.9%, and Bill.com reported revenues up 13.9%, in line with consensus estimates. Paycor’s stock price was unchanged after the resultswhile Bill.com was down 35.6%.

Read our full analysis of Paycor’s results here and Bill.com’s results here.

Stocks, especially growth stocks where cash flows further in the future are more important to the story, had a good 2024. An economic soft landing (so far), the start of the Fed's rate cutting campaign, and the election of Donald Trump were positives for the market, and while some of the finance and HR software stocks have shown solid performance, the group has generally underpeformed, with share prices down 4.8% on average over the last month. Marqeta is down 3.4% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $5.11 (compared to the current share price of $3.71).

Here at StockStory, we certainly understand the potential of thematic investing. Diverse winners from Microsoft (MSFT) to Alphabet (GOOG), Coca-Cola (KO) to Monster Beverage (MNST) could all have been identified as promising growth stories with a megatrend driving the growth. So, in that spirit, we’ve identified a relatively under-the-radar profitable growth stock benefiting from the rise of AI, available to you FREE via this link.