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PayPal Shares Slump as Revenue Growth Slows

The payment giant’s quarterly revenue increased 13% in the fourth quarter, down from a 25% increase a year ago.

Updated May 11, 2023, 4:05 p.m. Published Feb 1, 2022, 10:27 p.m.
(Getty Images)
(Getty Images)

Shares of PayPal (PYPL) fell more than 16% after the payments giant reported Q4 earnings that just missed analyst estimates and a slowdown in revenue growth.

  • Total revenue rose 13% to $6.9 billion, in line with the consensus of analysts' estimates, according to FactSet, but significantly slower than the 25% growth recorded in the year-ago quarter.
  • PayPal reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.11 for the fourth quarter, just below the analyst consensus estimate of $1.12.
  • PayPal added 9.8 million net new active accounts in the quarter, including 3.2 million from the acquisition of Paidy. That was down, however, from 13.3 million net new active accounts added in Q3.
  • Total payment volume for the quarter was $339.5 billion, up 23% year over year on a spot and foreign-exchange neutral basis. Transaction revenue came in at $6.4 billion, up from $5.61 billion in the third quarter.
  • Part of PayPal’s transaction revenue comes from the company’s crypto “buy, sell and hold” product, but the company excludes crypto payments from total payment volume.
  • In early January, PayPal confirmed it is looking into developing its own stablecoin as its crypto business continues to grow.
  • Shares of PayPal were down 16.2% to $147.40 in after-hours trading on Tuesday.

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  • The findings come as prior research from Anthropic and OpenAI shows AI agents can execute end-to-end smart contract exploits at low cost, accelerating concerns that offensive AI capabilities are scaling faster than defensive adoption.