NEW YORK ( TheStreet) -- Global Payments traded up yesterday following strong second-quarter earnings. The payment solutions provider reported second-quarter earnings of $1.27 per diluted share, which beat analysts' expectations of $1.20 a share. The company also reported revenue of $697.3 million, a 10% increase year over year. This too beat analysts' expectations, coming in ahead of the $689.49 million estimate. Must Read: Analysts' Actions: AbbVie, American Eagle, Crocs, Lilly, Yelp Looking ahead to the 2015 fiscal year, Global Payments raised its earnings predictions to between $4.75 and $4.83 per share on revenue between $2.75 billion and $2.8 billion. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters are expecting the company to earn $4.77 per share on revenue of $2.79 billion. Shares ended sharply higher yesterday, gaining 5.7% to close at $84.75. This morning, shares opened at $85.20, and were last trading at $85.53, up 0.88%. Here's what analysts said about Global Payments: Georgios Mihalos, Credit Suisse (Outperform, $95 PT) "For the second quarter in a row GPN posted results that handily exceeded CS/consensus estimates and raised its outlook for FY15. The increased outlook, particularly on the revenue side given exacerbating F/X headwinds, comes as a welcome surprise and underscores our confidence in GPN driving LT high-single-digit top-line growth. While all geographies surpassed our expectations, Int'l margin strength was the main event. Margins expanded by 280 bps y-o-y and handily exceeded our 36.7% projection. Key drivers include pricing initiatives in Spain which we believe drove the majority of the upside, a partial quarter of Ezidebit revenue (~10bps impact) and modest pricing initiatives in APAC. The strong performance is impressive given continued weakness in Russia and negative F/X trends. Must Read: Fab Co-founder Takes Another Stab At E-Commerce To Defend the Little Guys Against Amazon Glenn Greene, Oppenheimer (Outperform, $90 PT) "GPN delivered strong upside 2Q:FY15 results, and raised its FY15 guidance again despite significant incremental FX headwinds. Organic revenue growth of 5% Y/Y was broad-based with International driving the upside relative to our expectations. Operating margins were strong, led by international, which likely reflects Spain pricing benefits. NA margins modestly missed our expectations, despite ISO softness, which likely reflects Canada FX headwinds. GPN now expects up to 50bps of annual margin expansion, with expansion in both NA and International segments. We raise our FY15/16 estimates, and continue to believe expectations could prove conservative " Darrin D. Peller, Barclays (Equal Weight, $95) "GPN reported fiscal F2Q15 cash EPS of $1.27 (above our estimate of $1.19 and the consensus estimate of $1.20) and GAAP EPS of $1.10. We attribute the ~$0.08 beat versus our model to a lower-than-expected share count (~1c impact), slightly better-than-expected tax rate (~3c impact) and better-than-expected revenues, particularly in Europe with reported revenue of $160mn topping our estimate for $155mn by ~3% adding ~5c to EPS. We believe that the strength in Europe was driven by pricing increases and market share capture in Spain, and better-than-expected eCommerce growth (UK), which more than offset FX. Europe's strength was accompanied by a ~5% beat in Asia-Pacific (~2c impact) with Ezidebit adding ~12% to growth in the region. " Paul Condra, BMO Capital Markets (Market Perform, $90) "Given all the volatility in the world, we believe GPN's continued solid performance across geographies speaks to management's ability to execute on its strategy. To us, the most telling tidbit from FY2Q15 was the fact that - excluding the currency impact - North American operating margins expanded a full 70 bp (to 18.1%), demonstrating, in our view, that management is making good on its promise for margin expansion. Unfortunately, currency headwinds - while so far not as bad as feared - are likely to get worse before they get better, and this will likely continue to mask some of these positive trends over the next couple of quarters. On the upside, should currencies stop dropping over the next six months, this sets the company up for solid margin expansion later in FY2016. In the meantime, given the stock's rally Thursday and the propensity of late for massive market swings, we believe investors may get better entry points. As for read-throughs, management stressed that integrated channels remain solid mid-teens growers with no material changes in demand or the competitive environment - which we view as a positive for VNTV." Must Read: Why Yelp Gets an Upgrade Following a Near 50% Decline in Shares TheStreet Ratings team rates GLOBAL PAYMENTS INC as a Buy with a ratings score of A-. TheStreet Ratings Team has this to say about their recommendation: "We rate GLOBAL PAYMENTS INC (GPN) a BUY. This is based on the convergence of positive investment measures, which should help this stock outperform the majority of stocks that we rate. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, solid stock price performance, impressive record of earnings per share growth, increase in net income and expanding profit margins. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company shows weak operating cash flow." Highlights from the analysis by TheStreet Ratings Team goes as follows: The revenue growth came in higher than the industry average of 6.3%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues rose by 11.9%. Growth in the company's revenue appears to have helped boost the earnings per share. Looking at where the stock is today compared to one year ago, we find that it is not only higher, but it has also clearly outperformed the rise in the S&P 500 over the same period. Although other factors naturally played a role, the company's strong earnings growth was key. Turning our attention to the future direction of the stock, it goes without saying that even the best stocks can fall in an overall down market. However, in any other environment, this stock still has good upside potential despite the fact that it has already risen in the past year. GLOBAL PAYMENTS INC has improved earnings per share by 26.4% in the most recent quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago. The company has demonstrated a pattern of positive earnings per share growth over the past two years. We feel that this trend should continue. During the past fiscal year, GLOBAL PAYMENTS INC increased its bottom line by earning $3.37 versus $2.76 in the prior year. This year, the market expects an improvement in earnings ($4.73 versus $3.37). The net income growth from the same quarter one year ago has exceeded that of the S&P 500 and greatly outperformed compared to the IT Services industry average. The net income increased by 16.6% when compared to the same quarter one year prior, going from $64.64 million to $75.37 million. The gross profit margin for GLOBAL PAYMENTS INC is rather high; currently it is at 68.04%. It has increased from the same quarter the previous year. Along with this, the net profit margin of 10.69% is above that of the industry average. You can view the full analysis from the report here: GPN Ratings Report Written by Rebecca Borison in New York >Contact by Email. 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