UPDATE 2-Western Union quarterly profit rises 8 percent
* Q1 profit per share 32 cents
* Customer transactions increase
* Shares climb nearly 13 percent (Recasts first paragraph; adds CEO comment, detail of year-ago charge)
NEW YORK, April 21 (Reuters) - Western Union (WU.N) reported higher first-quarter earnings as it benefited from cost cuts, and shares of the world's largest payment transfer company rose nearly 13 percent.
Net income climbed 8.2 percent to $223.9 million, or 32 cents a share, from $207 million, or 27 cents a share, a year earlier.
Analysts on average expected the Englewood, Colorado, company to report a profit of 27 cents a share. It was not immediately clear whether that figure compared directly with Western Union's net income.
Western Union recorded a $24 million restructuring charge in the year-earlier quarter after cutting jobs and closing facilities.
Cost cuts helped the company. It also saw a small uptick in customer-to-customer transactions, which make up 84 percent of Western Union's revenue.
"We recognize that 2009 has seen some slowing in the amount of principal that's flowing around the world, but we're still seeing that people need to send money," Chief Executive Christina Gold told Reuters.
The company, once best known for telegrams, has been suffering as consumers are sending less money globally as a result of the recession. Transaction growth had slowed in previous quarters.
Western Union shares were up 12.8 percent at $16.09 in morning New York Stock Exchange trade after climbing as high as $16.57 earlier in the session. The stock had fallen 4.4 percent on Monday amid a broad rout of financial shares. (Reporting by Elinor Comlay; Editing by Derek Caney and Lisa Von Ahn)
