📢 PayPal surprises the market: strong results, Venmo growth and $15 billion share buyback! 🚀
PayPal $PYPL presented its Q4 financial results yesterday and confirmed that it still has a lot to offer despite growing competition. The company reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue, plus announced a massive share buyback program, boosting investor confidence.
Despite this, the shares fell by more than 10% in response to the results.
📊 Key numbers that no one should miss:
Earnings per share: $1.12 (in line with expectations)
Revenue: $8.37 billion (vs. $8.26 billion expected)
Total payments: $437.8 billion
Share buybacks: $15 billion new program ($6 billion buyback in 2025)
Transaction margin growth: Increased to 47% (from 45.8% in the previous year)
PayPal stock growth: +43% over the last 12 months 📈
💳 Venmo grows, Braintree boosts monetization
Venmo, a key component of the PayPal ecosystem , has seen year-over-year growth in payment volume of 10 %. Major partners now accepting Venmo include DoorDash, Starbucks and Ticketmaster.
PayPal is also effectively monetizing acquisitions - Braintree, which processes credit cards for giants like Meta, is generating growing profits. As a result, its transaction margin in dollars has increased by 7 % to $14.7 billion.
Other monetization moves:
Venmo debit card - allows customers to spend their balances online and offline. The number of active accounts grew by 30 % 📈
Pay With Venmo - an easy way to make online payments, increasing the number of active accounts by 20 %
Fastlane - payment technology to reduce cart abandonment rates, competition for Apple Pay a Shop Pay
PayPal Everywhere - cashback 5 % on the PayPal debit card , launched in September 2024
🔥 New CEO and strategy for 2025
A change in strategy is evident since Alex Chrissjoined in September 2023 - focus on profitability, effective monetisation and strengthening key products. PayPal, which has faced competitive pressure in recent years, is looking to reignite growth and improve margins.
According to the outlook , transaction margins are expected to grow by 4-5 %, which could be important for a return to the top of the fintech sector.
Do you think PayPal has the potential to dominate the digital payments market again?
The $PYPL has rebounded nicely from those low levels in recent months. I don't see any big upside for this company anymore, but then again, they're not in a bad place. The results would probably have to be very TOP for the price to go up when it was at its highest levels in 2 years.
For me it's probably a silent risky investment and I don't like the business that much.
Recently, the company has been doing quite well. I had $PYPL stock in my portfolio for a while, but then the company didn't do well at all and I sold. I won't take the risk again.
The buybacks are fine, but my opinion of this company is still the same and I won't be buying after the downturn.