Mastercard (MA) — 193% ROE, $17.8B FCF, and a P/E 20% below its own 5-year average

Current price: $495.25 (June 1, 2026 close) · Market cap: ~$437.6B · Sector: Financials / Payment Networks 1

Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE: MA) runs the second-largest card payment network on earth. Like Visa — featured in this channel yesterday — it does not lend money, does not take credit risk, and does not hold deposits. Every time a Mastercard-branded card is used anywhere in the world, Mastercard collects a small fee. In fiscal year 2025, those fees totaled $32.8B in net revenue on $9.2 trillion in gross dollar volume (GDV) processed across 200+ countries. 2

All three hard screening criteria are met. Return on equity ran at 161.6% / 198.5% / 193.5% across FY2023–FY2025 (SEC EDGAR XBRL verified) — all well above the 15% threshold, though the extraordinary scale of these numbers requires explanation. Free cash flow has been positive and growing every year, reaching $16.4B in FY2025 and $17.8B on a trailing-twelve-month basis. And a trailing P/E of 28.65x sits 20.6% below Mastercard's own 5-year average of 36.09x — the lowest valuation the stock has carried since 2022, driven by stock price decline rather than earnings deterioration. 1 3

Two risks dominate the discount: the Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA), which analysts estimate could put 6–9% of MA's total global revenue at risk if passed, and a $38B interchange fee settlement still under judicial review. Both are legitimate and quantifiable — this analysis works through whether they are appropriately priced at current levels.

What Mastercard does and how it makes money

Mastercard operates a two-sided payment network connecting cardholders, merchants, banks, and governments. When a Mastercard-branded card is used, the transaction flows through Mastercard's network for authorization, clearing, and settlement. Mastercard charges service fees (based on GDV), data processing fees (based on transaction count), and international transaction fees (on cross-border payments). The company does not issue cards itself and does not extend credit — those functions belong to the issuing banks that license the Mastercard brand.

This structure strips out almost all operating complexity. Mastercard's FY2025 capital expenditures were $1.215B on $32.79B in net revenue — roughly 3.7 cents of capex per revenue dollar. 3 The result is an operating margin of 57.6% in FY2025 (up from 53.4% in FY2021) and a FCF margin above 50% of revenue — consistently, across market cycles. 4

Beyond the core card network, Mastercard has built a growing value-added services (VAS) segment covering cybersecurity, data analytics, digital identity, and fraud prevention. In full-year 2025, VAS net revenue grew 23% year-over-year; in Q4 2025 alone it jumped 26% to $3.9B. 5 In Q1 2026, VAS continued growing at 18%. This segment diversifies the revenue base beyond traditional transaction fees — and at higher margins.

ROE track record — SEC EDGAR verified

All figures use consolidated net income (ProfitLoss, inclusive of noncontrolling interests, which are negligible — FY2025 noncontrolling interest was $9M) divided by end-of-period stockholders' equity per SEC EDGAR XBRL (CIK 0001141391). 3

Fiscal year	Net income	Stockholders' equity	ROE
FY2023 (ended Dec 31, 2023)	$11,195M	$6,929M	161.6% ✓
FY2024 (ended Dec 31, 2024)	$12,874M	$6,485M	198.5% ✓
FY2025 (ended Dec 31, 2025)	$14,968M	$7,737M	193.5% ✓
TTM (to Mar 31, 2026)	$15,570M	$6,719M	231.7%

Sources: 3

What these numbers actually mean. A 161%–232% ROE at a $437B company does not reflect unusually superior operations — it reflects unusually small equity. Mastercard's aggressive share buyback program has compressed stockholders' equity to just $6.5–$7.7B while the company generates $14–15B in annual net income. The math produces stratospheric ROE ratios that fail at their stated purpose of measuring capital efficiency, because there is almost no capital in the denominator.

The more useful number is ROIC (return on invested capital): 95.21% per StockAnalysis, indicating that for every dollar of net capital Mastercard deploys in operations, it generates roughly 95 cents in annual operating return after tax. 1 That is the real measure of the moat. Visa, for context, posts ROE near 48.5% on a positive equity base of $35–39B — a genuine ROE, not leverage-amplified. Neither is "wrong"; they just reflect different capital return philosophies. MA buys back more aggressively; V maintains higher equity buffers.

Free cash flow — five years of consistent generation

FCF is calculated as operating cash flow minus capital expenditures (PP&E plus software), per SEC EDGAR XBRL. StockAnalysis reports a higher TTM FCF of $17.78B (using only PP&E capex, excluding software capitalization); the figures below use the broader definition. 3

Loading chart…

FY2021: $9.06B
FY2022: $10.75B (+18.7% YoY)
FY2023: $11.98B OCF − $1.09B CapEx = $10.89B (+1.3% YoY; OCF grew 13% but a single-year CapEx step-up compressed FCF growth)
FY2024: $14.78B OCF − $1.19B CapEx = $13.59B (+24.8% YoY)
FY2025: $17.65B OCF − $1.22B CapEx = $16.43B (+20.9% YoY)
TTM (to Mar 31, 2026): $18.27B OCF − $1.19B CapEx = $17.07B 3

Four-year FCF CAGR (FY2021–FY2025): approximately 16.1%. TTM FCF yield at current price: $17.07B ÷ $437.6B market cap = 3.90% (StockAnalysis reports 4.06% using the narrower PP&E-only capex definition; the difference is approximately $700M in annual software capitalization). 1 CapEx has grown modestly (from $1.09B to $1.22B over three years) but remains under 7% of operating cash flow — the business does not consume capital to grow.

Revenue and earnings growth

Loading chart…

Fiscal year	Revenue	YoY growth	Net income	EPS (diluted)	Net margin
FY2021	$18,884M	—	$8,687M	$8.76	46.0%
FY2022	$22,237M	+17.8%	$9,930M	$10.22	44.7%
FY2023	$25,098M	+12.9%	$11,195M	$11.83	44.6%
FY2024	$28,172M	+12.2%	$12,874M	$13.89	45.7%
FY2025	$32,787M	+16.4%	$14,968M	$16.52	45.7%
TTM (Mar 2026)	$33,940M	—	$15,570M	$17.29	45.9%

Sources: 4 3

Five-year revenue CAGR (FY2021–FY2025): 14.8%. Net income CAGR: 14.6%. EPS CAGR: 17.2% — the extra 2.5 percentage points come from buybacks reducing the share count approximately 2% per year (shares outstanding fell from 988M in FY2021 to 887M by Q1 2026 TTM, a cumulative reduction of about 10%). 4

FY2025's acceleration to 16.4% revenue growth (from 12.2% in FY2024) is the most recent read on business momentum. Q1 2026 continued the trend: revenue grew 16.75% year-over-year, net income grew 18.47%, and EPS of $4.60 beat analyst consensus by approximately 4.4%. 6 However, Q2 2026 guidance came in softer — management guided for revenue growth at the "low end of low double digits" on a currency-neutral basis, citing Middle East conflict as a direct headwind (the Gulf Cooperation Council region and Israel together represent roughly 6% of Mastercard's total cross-border volumes). Without that impact, management noted Q2 would have been "generally in line with Q1." 6

Operating margin has expanded steadily from 53.4% in FY2021 to 57.6% in FY2025 and 57.9% on a TTM basis — a 4.5-percentage-point improvement over four years on a business already running at over 50%. Net margin has been remarkably stable at 44.6%–45.9% throughout the same period. The combination of expanding operating leverage and stable net margins is characteristic of businesses with minimal incremental cost of growth.

Valuation — 20.6% below the 5-year P/E average

Mastercard (MA) — key metrics snapshot (June 1, 2026)

Price $495.25 | Market cap $437.6B | Based on TTM and FY2025 data

Stock price

$495.25

Trailing P/E

28.65x

Forward P/E

24.46x

P/B

65.37x

EV/EBITDA

20.97x

P/FCF

24.61x

FCF yield

4.06%

Dividend yield

0.70%

Beta (5Y)

0.74

Loading stats card…

Sources: 1 7

Mastercard's 5-year P/E history reframes the current valuation. Over 20 quarterly observations from Q2 2021 through Q1 2026, the average trailing P/E was approximately 36.09. 8 The current 28.65x is below every year-end reading between 2021 and 2024. The compression happened through stock price decline — MA fell roughly 15.4% over the past year — while TTM EPS actually grew 21.2% (from $14.28 to $17.29). 7 The market paid less for more earnings, which is a meaningful signal worth examining.

The P/B of 65.37x needs context. This figure reflects Mastercard's near-zero book equity ($6.7B) relative to a $437B market cap — entirely a product of aggressive buybacks reducing the equity base. It is not a useful valuation metric for MA, and comparing it to Visa's P/B of 17.31x would be misleading. The more relevant comparisons are P/E, EV/EBITDA, and P/FCF, which are not distorted by equity size.

Peer comparison table (data as of June 1, 2026):

Company	Trailing P/E	Forward P/E	EV/EBITDA	P/FCF	FCF yield
MA (Mastercard — global payment network, 21.6% global credit card share)	28.65x	24.46x	20.97x	24.61x	4.06%
V (Visa — global payment network, 52.2% global credit card share)	28.14x	23.17x	20.51x	28.70x	3.48%
AXP (American Express — closed-loop issuer + payment network)	19.57x	17.39x	n/a‡	14.94x	6.69%
PYPL (PayPal — digital wallet, online payments platform)	8.47x	8.33x	6.42x	7.24x	13.81%
FIS (Fidelity National Information Services — banking tech provider)	8.51x	6.81x	12.98x	8.66x	11.55%
GPN (Global Payments — merchant acquiring and payment software)	n/m†	5.26x	9.79x	19.45x	5.14%
Peer median (5 peers excl. MA)	19.57x	8.33x	11.39x	14.94x	6.69%

Sources: 1 9 10 11 12 13

†GPN reported a TTM GAAP net loss of $705M, making trailing P/E not meaningful (n/m). The Altman Z-Score for GPN is 0.58 (distress range), making it a poor valuation benchmark for MA. ‡AXP's bank-style balance sheet renders EV/EBITDA not applicable.

Three observations from this table. First, MA and Visa trade at nearly identical multiples on every P/E and EV/EBITDA measure: trailing P/E gap is just 1.8%, EV/EBITDA gap is 2.2%. The market prices the two networks as functional equivalents — which they largely are, from a business model perspective. MA is actually cheaper on P/FCF (24.61x vs. Visa's 28.70x, a 14.2% discount), reflecting MA's stronger FCF conversion ratio. Second, the apparent 104% P/E premium over the broad peer median is primarily driven by PayPal and FIS trading at distressed multiples — these are not comparable businesses. Third, both MA and Visa sit at 20–21% discounts to their own 5-year P/E averages, suggesting the duopoly discount is a sector-wide re-rating driven by regulatory sentiment rather than company-specific deterioration.

Balance sheet health

Metric	Q1 2026 (Mar 31, 2026)
Total debt	$18,960M
Cash & equivalents	$8,220M
Net debt	$10,580M
Debt-to-EBITDA	0.89x
Debt-to-equity (book)	2.82x*
Interest coverage	~27.9x
Current ratio	0.98
Altman Z-Score	10.82
Credit rating	S&P A+ (stable); Moody's A1 (stable)†

Sources: 1 7

*D/E of 2.82x reflects the buyback-compressed equity base, not operating leverage. The economically relevant metric is Debt/EBITDA at 0.89x — debt is less than one year of EBITDA. †S&P A+ and Moody's A1 are widely cited industry ratings; direct agency page confirmation was not retrieved in this research cycle.

Mastercard's $18.96B in total debt is easily serviceable. Interest coverage of ~27.9x (operating income of ~$20.2B against approximately $725M interest expense) means Mastercard could sustain a 96% decline in operating income before coverage becomes tight. 1 Total debt is approximately equal to one year of free cash flow ($17B TTM FCF). The Altman Z-Score of 10.82 is far above the 3.0 threshold that defines low bankruptcy risk — for context, Global Payments and FIS both score below 1.0 on the same metric.

The current ratio of 0.98 (working capital of -$436M) is slightly below 1.0 but is unremarkable for an asset-light financial infrastructure business. One near-term obligation: Mastercard's 2016-vintage USD notes due November 2026 were reclassified to short-term debt as of year-end 2025. At $750M or less (based on the September 2024 senior notes issuance size), this is refinanceable in a single transaction and is not a material liquidity event for a company generating $17B+ in annual FCF.

Mastercard's capital return policy is aggressive by design. In Q1 2026 alone, the company repurchased $4.0B of stock plus an additional $1.7B through April 27. As of late January 2026, $16.7B remained under the current $14B buyback authorization (board approved a new $14B program alongside the December 2025 dividend raise). 14 The combined shareholder yield (dividend 0.70% + buyback 2.28%) is approximately 2.98%. 1

Risk factors

1. Credit Card Competition Act — the largest quantified risk

The CCCA, reintroduced in Congress in January 2026 with Trump administration backing, would require banks with assets above $100B to offer at least two unaffiliated payment network choices on credit cards, with neither allowed to be both Visa and Mastercard simultaneously. Analysts estimate that 6%–9% of Mastercard's total global net revenue is directly susceptible to US routing competition if the bill passes. 5 A first attempt to attach CCCA to the CLARITY Act failed on January 29, 2026; sponsors are now pursuing attachment to defense authorization or a broader economic package. The bill has failed in multiple prior congressional sessions. If enacted, the 6–9% revenue exposure would not disappear instantly — it would compress over years as issuers renegotiate routing terms, and MA's response would likely be price and value competition rather than network abandonment.

Quantified trigger to watch: whether CCCA gains enough Senate cosponsors to reach 60 votes for cloture. It has not done so in any prior session.

2. $38B merchant interchange settlement — still under judicial review

In November 2025, Visa and Mastercard announced a revised $38B settlement with US merchants over 20-year interchange fee litigation. Terms include swipe fees reduced by 0.10 percentage points for five years, standard consumer rates capped at 1.25% for eight years (from the current ~2.35% average), and expanded merchant ability to surcharge up to 3%. 15 The prior $30B settlement was rejected by US District Judge Margo Brodie in June 2024 as providing insufficient relief. As of April 2026, the revised settlement remains under judicial review, with active opposition from the National Retail Federation (NRF) and the Merchants Payments Coalition.

NRF General Counsel Stephanie Martz pushed back on merchant pressure arguments: "You can't just suddenly tell more than 80% of your card customers you're not going to take their cards. You would lose a lot of business." 15 The settlement does not require admission of wrongdoing by Visa or Mastercard. Three New York merchants separately filed a new suit in April 2026 seeking to remove the legal immunity granted by the 2019 damages settlement — adding another litigation thread.

3. International regulatory pressure

Global regulatory action against interchange fees has intensified across multiple jurisdictions simultaneously:

UK: The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) opened a competition investigation into Visa and Mastercard in May 2026. The UK Competition Appeal Tribunal ruled against multilateral interchange fees in June 2025. 5
Australia: The Reserve Bank of Australia announced a consumer credit card interchange cap dropping from 0.80% to 0.30%, aligning with EU levels, effective from 2026. 15
EU: The ECB selected open European standards for the Digital Euro in April 2026, explicitly sidelining Visa and Mastercard from the initiative.
New Zealand: Commerce Commission interchange caps took effect for domestic cards in December 2025 and foreign-issued cards in May 2026.

Mastercard generates approximately 66% of revenue outside the US. The aggregate impact of these actions across a multi-year horizon is not yet independently quantified by sell-side analysts, but the directional pressure on cross-border and international interchange margins is consistent across regions.

4. Technology disruption — stablecoins and real-time rails

Stablecoins processed more total dollar volume than Visa and Mastercard combined in early 2026. 2 Real-time payment systems — Brazil's PIX, India's UPI, the US FedNow network — process billions of monthly transactions at near-zero fees. Mastercard's stock decline from its 2025 highs has been attributed in part to investor concern about stablecoin disruption.

Mastercard's response is to participate rather than resist. The company obtained a New York State BitLicense from NYDFS on May 27, 2026, enabling regulated crypto and stablecoin activities. 7 It is acquiring BVNK, a blockchain infrastructure platform, expected to close in 2026. Mastercard partnered with JPMorgan, Ripple, and Ondo Finance to execute the first tokenized US Treasury redemption on the XRP Ledger on May 6, 2026. 7 The company's management views stablecoin volumes as an "addressable market not currently participated in by Mastercard, providing accretive opportunity." 6 At the same time, stablecoins currently lack consumer chargeback protection, universal merchant acceptance, and the regulatory clarity that card networks have — advantages that have proven slow to erode.

5. Insider transactions and ownership

Insider direct ownership is 0.03% of shares outstanding (approximately $131M at current market cap), very low for the company's size. 1 This reflects Mastercard's history as a bank-owned cooperative that went public in 2006; executives are compensated primarily through RSUs and options rather than long-term share accumulation. Over the past 12 months, insiders recorded approximately $19M+ in net sales: CFO Sachin Mehra sold approximately $10.2M in September 2025; President Ling Hai sold approximately $4.5M in February 2026; Vice Chair Timothy Murphy proposed a sale of approximately $2.3M in August 2025. 7 All transactions follow the option-exercise-and-sell pattern consistent with pre-scheduled 10b5-1 plans, not discretionary sales. Short interest is 7.1M shares (0.81% of float, 1.94 days to cover) — negligible. 1

Near-term catalysts

Next earnings date. Mastercard reported Q1 2026 results on April 30, 2026. Q2 2026 results are not yet formally scheduled but are expected in late July 2026, based on the pattern of prior quarters (Q2 2025 was July 31, 2025). 6 Key variables: whether cross-border volume growth recovers from the Q2 softness caused by Middle East conflict, and whether VAS continues growing above 18%. Management's baseline assumption for Q2 is that the Middle East conflict's impact on cross-border spending moderates through the quarter.

Dividend. Mastercard pays $0.87 per share quarterly ($3.48 annualized), raised in December 2025 by 14.5% from $0.76. 14 The current yield is 0.70% at $495.25. Payout ratio is 18.86%, leaving ample capacity for continued increases. This marks 14 consecutive years of dividend growth; the 3-year CAGR is 15.6% and the 5-year CAGR is 13.9%. 1 The next ex-dividend date is expected around July 2026.

Analyst consensus. 39 Wall Street analysts cover MA. Consensus is Strong Buy with an average 12-month price target of $646.97, implying +30.6% upside from the June 1 close. 1 Finviz aggregates a slightly different set of analysts at an average target of $650.38 and a recommendation score of 1.27 (where 1.0 = Strong Buy). 7 The upgrade-to-downgrade ratio over the past 12 months is approximately 8:1. The outlier bearish note: Zacks (February 2026) assigned a Hold (Rank #3), citing regulatory overhang and rising operating expenses. Analyst targets carry systematic optimism bias — use directionally. The $735 high target (Compass Point, Citigroup) assumes regulatory risks do not materialize. 7

52-week context. 52-week high: $601.77 (approximately June 2025). 52-week low: $480.50. At $495.25, MA is trading 17.7% below the 52-week high and 3.1% above the 52-week low — near the bottom of its annual range. The stock trades 8.5% below its 200-day moving average of $541.46, technically in a downtrend. RSI of 46.7 is neutral, not oversold. 7 YTD decline is -13.25%, with the post-Q1 drop specifically driven by Q2 guidance softness and geopolitical cross-border headwinds rather than any fundamental change in the business.

EPS growth forecasts. Analyst consensus projects 3-year EPS CAGR of 16.5% and revenue CAGR of 12.6%. At the forward P/E of 24.46x, the PEG ratio is 1.48 — indicating a moderate premium to the growth rate. 1

Competitive positioning versus Visa and other payment networks

Mastercard holds 21.6% of global credit card market share, second to Visa's 52.2%. Together they control approximately 73.8% of global credit card volume — and roughly 90% outside China, where domestic networks UnionPay and local schemes dominate. 2 In the eurozone, Visa and Mastercard together processed 47% of card payment value in 2025; 13 of 19 eurozone countries are classified as "highly reliant" on the two US networks.

As of December 31, 2025, there were 3.7 billion Mastercard and Maestro-branded cards in circulation globally, up 5% year-over-year. Contactless penetration reached 78% of all in-person switched purchase transactions in Q1 2026, up 5 percentage points year-over-year. 6

How MA and Visa differ operationally. Both run open-loop, asset-light networks with nearly identical business models. The key differences are:

Scale: Visa processed $14T GDV in FY2025 vs. Mastercard's $9.2T — Visa is roughly 52% larger. 2 Visa's larger US debit market share (~60%) gives it higher debit revenue but also makes it the primary target of the DOJ antitrust suit. Mastercard was not named in that suit.
Margin profile: Visa's operating margin is approximately 67% versus Mastercard's 58%. The gap reflects Visa's larger revenue base absorbing a similar cost structure. Both are exceptional; neither is inefficient.
VAS diversification: Mastercard's value-added services segment is proportionally more developed, growing 23% in FY2025 vs. Visa's slower non-transaction revenue growth. This diversification reduces Mastercard's relative dependence on pure-network transaction fees.
Cross-border exposure: Both companies are heavily exposed to international transaction fees — the highest-margin segment and the one most directly at risk from the regulatory actions described above.
Capital return: Mastercard is more aggressive, producing the buyback-driven ROE inflation noted above. Visa maintains higher equity buffers and a slightly lower yield profile.

The moat structure is essentially identical: a two-sided network requiring simultaneous merchant and consumer adoption, built over five decades, with fraud infrastructure, tokenization, and compliance tooling layered on top. New entrants face the classic chicken-and-egg problem — merchants will not accept a network consumers do not carry, and consumers will not carry a card merchants do not accept. Mastercard's management frames its digital capabilities and tokenization infrastructure as "particularly difficult for competitors to scale." 6

American Express (AXP) operates a different model — a closed loop, where it simultaneously issues cards, extends credit, and processes transactions. This produces lower margins (~20% operating margin) but more control over the customer relationship and higher per-card spending (Amex cardholders skew affluent). PayPal, FIS, and Global Payments operate at lower layers of the payments stack: digital wallets, core banking technology, and merchant acquiring, respectively. None presents a direct competitive threat to the network layer MA and Visa occupy.

Bull vs. bear thesis framework

The bull case rests on four concrete observations.

First, the earnings engine is intact. Revenue grew 16.4% in FY2025 and the most recent quarter (Q1 2026) posted another 16.75%. The Q2 guidance softness is attributable to a geographically specific and potentially temporary disruption (Gulf Cooperation Council region and Israel, together representing 6% of cross-border volumes), not a structural deterioration in payment volumes globally. 6

Second, the valuation discount to Mastercard's own history is the deepest it has been since 2022. Paying 28.65x trailing earnings for a business that has compounded EPS at 17.2% CAGR for five years, with 95% ROIC, $17B+ FCF, and 14 consecutive years of dividend growth is cheaper than any P/E Mastercard carried at year-end in 2021, 2022, 2023, or 2024. 8

Third, MA is cheaper than Visa on P/FCF despite stronger FCF generation. At 24.61x P/FCF versus Visa's 28.70x, MA offers more free cash flow per dollar paid — a concrete advantage for investors who weight FCF over reported earnings. 1 9

Fourth, the company is actively building stablecoin and digital asset infrastructure — reducing the binary risk that crypto/stablecoin growth is purely a threat. The BVNK acquisition and BitLicense position Mastercard to earn fees on stablecoin volume rather than simply lose card volume to it.

The bear case centers on three real concerns.

Regulatory pressure is broad and synchronized. The CCCA (6–9% revenue risk), the $38B settlement under judicial review, UK FCA investigation, Australian interchange cap reduction, and ECB digital euro initiative are not isolated events — they reflect a global regulatory movement applying consistent pressure on the highest-margin parts of MA's revenue base. If several of these actions land simultaneously and the market re-prices the risk, the appropriate multiple compresses further.

The forward P/E of 24.46x is not cheap relative to the S&P 500, which trades near 20x forward earnings. Mastercard commands a 22% premium to the broad index on the expectation of sustained mid-to-high-teens EPS growth. If growth decelerates toward 8–10% due to regulatory or competitive pressure, the appropriate forward multiple may be 18–20x — implying 17–22% downside from current levels on the multiple alone, before any earnings revision.

The Q2 guidance miss — the first time in recent memory management guided below analyst expectations — combined with the post-Q1 selloff, signals that the market has less tolerance for any operational shortfall from a stock that still carries a significant quality premium. The specific data point to watch in the late-July 2026 earnings report: whether cross-border volume growth re-accelerates toward Q1 levels, and whether the Middle East headwind is contained to Q2 or persists.

All financial data sourced from SEC EDGAR XBRL filings (CIK 0001141391), StockAnalysis, Finviz, Macrotrends, and the additional sources cited above. Price data represents the June 1, 2026 close. This article is for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Verify all data independently before making any investment decision.

Cover image: photo by Towfiqu Barbhuiya via Pexels