It won't get drawn. However, it still has to be parsed to "see" it's invisible. It may also get parsed for collisions etc. It's probably the best thing to do (although I wondered what putting the sprite way off screen would do, as this would exclude it from rendering but would it exclude it from collision tests?)
Best practice would be also to make sure it's shape is appropriate (for collisions or not) and it's alpha masking.
I always set the depth to keep in control of where it should render (avoid rendering alpha on alpha where possible) and when sprites are at the same level there will be some extra work to decide render order.
