PayPal shares slip as growth slows in card processing
Alex Chriss, CEO of PayPal Inc.
Courtesy: PayPal
PayPal reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter results on Tuesday and issued guidance that also topped analysts’ expectations. The shares slid more than 9% in Tuesday morning trading.
Here’s how the company did compared with Wall Street estimates, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:
- Earnings per share: $1.19, adjusted vs. $1.12 expected
- Revenue: $8.37 billion vs. $8.26 billion expected
For the first quarter, PayPal expects adjusted earnings per share of $1.15 to $1.17, which is higher than the average analyst estimate of $1.13, though adjusted net income fell 1.9% to $1.21 billion. Earnings for the year will come in at $4.95 to $5.10 a share, topping the $4.90 average estimate, according to LSEG.
PayPal also announced a new $15 billion share buyback program, and expects to make around $6 billion in repurchases in 2025.
Revenue increased about 4% in the quarter from $8.03 billion a year ago.
Total payment volume, an indication of how digital payments are faring in the broader economy, was just short of estimates, coming in at $437.8 billion for the fourth quarter, versus the $438.2 billion analysts projected.
Unbranded payment volume — or the transactions PayPal handles for external businesses rather than its own platform — declined again in the fourth quarter as the company continues to pursue a price-to-value strategy, falling to 2% from 29% a year earlier. Chief Financial Officer Jamie Miller said during the earnings call the company expects “similar dynamics the next few quarters” and that over 2025, they expect renegotiations with existing customers to be an approximately “five-point revenue growth headwind.”
While PayPal’s take rate slipped to 1.91% from 1.96% a year earlier, transaction margin, which is how the company gauges the profitability of its core business, rose to 47% from 45.8%. In 2024, transaction margin dollars grew 7% to $14.7 billion, bolstered by Braintree, a service Meta uses for credit-card processing.
The company said it anticipates growth of 4% to 5% in transaction margin dollars in 2025 to $15.2 billion to $15.4 billion
PayPal’s stock is up 43% in the past year, as of Monday’s close. PayPal CEO Alex Chriss, who joined the company in September 2023, is trying to revive growth at PayPal, which had been been mired in a deep slump due to increased competition and a declining take rate, or the percentage of revenue PayPal keeps from each transaction.
Chriss has focused on prioritizing profitable growth and better monetizing key acquisitions like Braintree and payments app Venmo. In an earnings call on Tuesday, the PayPal CEO said the company had reduced headcount by 10% in 2024 and had made deliberate investments in AI and automation, which he described as being “critical” to the firm’s future.
Venmo’s total payment volume rose 10% in the quarter from a year earlier. DoorDash, Starbucks and Ticketmaster are among businesses now accepting Venmo as one way that consumers can pay.
In the short term, Chriss has said the two primary monetization levers are Venmo’s debit card, which allows customers to spend with their balance both online and offline, and Pay With Venmo, which provides a seamless way for customers to pay online. Monthly active accounts for the debit card grew more than 30% in 2024, and Pay with Venmo monthly actives increased more than 20%.
The company added 8.8 million active accounts last year.
Chriss said during the call with investors that solutions like Buy Now, Pay Later had helped PayPal expand its share of wallet, with BNPL customers spending 30% more on average. In 2024, he said BNPL had driven $33 billion in total payment volume, growing 21% from the previous year.
One of Chriss’ strategies to address the deteriorating margin was to offer merchants increased value-added services, such as connecting data points at checkout to drive down the rate of cart abandonment. That product, dubbed Fastlane, launched in August, and is a one-click payment option for online sales that can go head-to-head with Apple Pay and Shop Pay by Shopify.
“Seventy-five percent of Fastlane consumers are new or dormant PayPal users,” Chriss said during the earnings call. “This means that Fastlane not only improves conversion for our merchants, but also introduces more shoppers to PayPal and enables us to re-engage inactive users.”
In 2024, branded checkout volume rose more than 6%, thanks in part to strength across large enterprise platforms.
The other big product launch in 2024 was PayPal Everywhere, which went live in early September. The initiative offers 5% cash back for using a PayPal debit card within the mobile app.
“The improvements we made to branded checkout, peer-to-peer, and Venmo, plus the progress we made on our price-to-value strategy, are beginning to show up in our results,” Chriss said in the earnings statement.
EV charging veteran ChargePoint has unveiled its new charger product architecture, which is described as a “generational leap in AC Level 2 charging.” The new ChargePoint technology designed for consumers in North America and Europe will enable vehicle-to-everything (V2X) capabilities and the ability to charge your EV in as quickly as four hours.
ChargePoint is not only a seasoned contributor to EV infrastructure but has established itself as an innovative leader in the growing segment. In recent years, it has expanded and implemented new technologies to help simplify the overall process for its customers. In 2024, the network reached one million global charging ports and has added exciting features to support those stations.
Last summer, the network introduced a new “Omni Port,” combining multiple charging plugs into one port. It ensures EV drivers of nearly any make and model can charge at any ChargePoint space. The company also began implementing AI to bolster dependability within its charging network by identifying issues more quickly, improving uptime, and thus delivering better charging network reliability.
As we’ve pointed out, ChargePoint continues to utilize its resources to develop and implement innovative solutions to genuine problems many EV drivers face regularly, such as vandalism and theft. We’ve also seen ChargePoint implement new charger technology to make the process more affordable for fleets.
Today, ChargePoint has introduced a new charger architecture that promises to bring advanced features and higher charging rates to all its customers across residential, commercial, and fleet applications.
ChargePoint unveils maximum speed V2X charger tech
This morning, ChargePoint unveiled its next generation of EV charger architecture, complete with bidirectional capabilities and speeds up to double those of most current AC Level 2 chargers.
As mentioned above, this new architecture will serve as the backbone of new ChargePoint chargers across all segments, including residential, commercial, and fleet customers. Hossein Kazemi, chief technical officer of hardware at ChargePoint, elaborated:
ChargePoint’s next generation of EV chargers will be revolutionary, not evolutionary. The architecture underpinning them enables highly anticipated technologies which will deliver a significantly better experience for station owners and the EV drivers who charge with them.
The new ChargePoint chargers will feature V2X capabilities, enabling residential and commercial customers to use EVs to power homes and buildings with the opportunity to send excess energy back to the local grid. Dynamic load balancing can automatically boost charging speeds when power is not required at other parts of the connected building structure, enabling efficiency and faster recharge rates.
ChargePoint shared that its new charger architecture can achieve the fastest possible speed for AC current (80 amps/19.2 kW), charging the average EV from 0 to 100% in just four hours. That’s nearly double the current AC Level 2 standard (no pun intended).
Other features include smart home capabilities where residential or commercial owners can implement the charger within a more extensive energy storage system, including solar panels, power banks, and smart energy management systems. The new architecture also enables series-wiring capabilities, meaning fleet depots, multi-unit dwellings, or even residential homes with multiple EVs can maximize charging rates without upgrading their wiring configuration or energy service plan.
These new chargers will also feature ChargePoint’s Omni Port technology, enabling a wider range of compatibility across all EV makes and models. According to ChargePoint, this new architecture complies with MID and Eichrecht regulations in Europe and ENERGY STAR in the US.
The first charger models on the platform are expected to hit Europe this summer followed by North
America by the end of 2025.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Environment
Tanking oil prices could more than double Saudi Arabia’s deficit to $75 billion and threaten spending plans: Goldman Sachs economist
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Johnnygreig | E+ | Getty Images
Crashing oil prices triggered by waning demand, global trade war fears and growing crude supply could more than double Saudi Arabia’s budget deficit, a Goldman Sachs economist warned.
The bank’s outlook spotlighted the pressure on the kingdom to make changes to its mammoth spending plans and fiscal measures.
“The deficits on the fiscal side that we’re likely to see in the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries, especially big countries like Saudi Arabia, are going to be pretty significant,” Farouk Soussa, Middle East and North Africa economist at Goldman Sachs, told CNBC’s Access Middle East on Wednesday.
Spending by the kingdom has ballooned due to Vision 2030, a sweeping campaign to transform the Saudi economy and diversify its revenue streams away from hydrocarbons. A centerpiece of the project is Neom, an as-yet sparsely populated mega-region in the desert roughly the size of Massachusetts.
Plans for Neom include hyper-futuristic developments that altogether have been estimated to cost as much as $1.5 trillion. The kingdom is also hosting the 2034 World Cup and the 2030 World Expo, both infamously costly endeavors.
Digital render of NEOM’s The Line project in Saudi Arabia
The Line, NEOM
Saudi Arabia needs oil at more than $90 a barrel to balance its budget, the International Monetary Fund estimates. Goldman Sachs this week lowered its year-end 2025 oil price forecast to $62 a barrel for Brent crude, down from a previous forecast of $69 — a figure that the bank’s economists say could more than double Saudi Arabia’s 2024 budget deficit of $30.8 billion.
“In Saudi Arabia, we estimate that we’re probably going to see the deficit go up from around $30 to $35 billion to around $70 to $75 billion, if oil prices stayed around $62 this year,” Soussa said.
“That means more borrowing, probably means more cutbacks on expenditure, it probably means more selling of assets, all of the above, and this is going to have an impact both on domestic financial conditions and potentially even international.”
Financing that level of deficit in international markets “is going to be challenging” given the shakiness of international markets right now, he added, and likely means Riyadh will need to look at other options to bridge their funding gap.
The kingdom still has significant headroom to borrow; their debt-to-GDP ratio as of December 2024 is just under 30%. In comparison, the U.S. and France’s debt-to-GDP ratios of 124% and 110.6%, respectively. But $75 billion in debt issuance would be difficult for the market to absorb, Soussa noted.
“That debt to GDP ratio, while comforting, doesn’t mean that the Saudis can issue as much debt as they like … they do have to look at other remedies,” he said, adding that those remedies include cutting back on capital expenditure, raising taxes, or selling more of their domestic assets — like state-owned companies Saudi Aramco and Sabic. Several Neom projects may end up on the chopping block, regional economists predict.
Saudi Arabia has an A/A-1 credit rating with a positive outlook from S&P Global Ratings and an A+ rating with a stable outlook from Fitch. That combined with high foreign currency reserves — $410.2 billion as of January, according to CEIC data — puts the kingdom in a comfortable place to manage a deficit.
The kingdom has also rolled out a series of reforms to boost and de-risk foreign investment and diversify revenue streams, which S&P Global said in September “will continue to improve Saudi Arabia’s economic resilience and wealth.”
“So the Saudis have lots of options, the mix of all of these is very difficult to pre-judge, but certainly we’re not looking at some sort of crisis,” Soussa said. “It’s just a question of which options they go for in order to deal with the challenges that they’re facing.”
Global benchmark Brent crude was trading at $63.58 per barrel on Thursday at 9:30 a.m. in London, down roughly 14% year-to-date.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business3 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway
Comments