How New Prospects Are Pushing PayPal to New Highs

[cnxvideo id=”655424″ placement=”ros”]PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL) reported first quarter financial results after markets closed Wednesday. The company posted $0.44 in earnings per share (EPS) and $2.98 billion in revenue, versus consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters that called for $0.41 in EPS and $2.94 billion in revenue. The same period from last year had $0.37 in EPS and $2.54 billion in revenue.

During the quarter 6.0 million active customer accounts were added, and the company ended the quarter with a total of 203 million active customer accounts, including 16 million merchant accounts.

At the same time, 1.7 billion payment transactions took place in the quarter, an increase of 23% from last year. On average there was 32 payment transactions per active account on a trailing 12-month basis, an increase of 12%. There was $99 billion processed in total payment volume, up 23% from last year, or 25% on a currency-neutral basis.

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The board of directors also authorized a new repurchase plan of up to $5 billion in outstanding common stock. This program will become effective after completion of the company’s January 2016 stock repurchase program. As of March 31, 2017, approximately $488 million remained available for stock repurchases under this prior authorization. Keep in mind the company has a market cap of roughly $53 billion

PayPal recently announced an expansion of its relationship with Google and Wells Fargo. PayPal will be available in the Android Pay wallet in the United States and accepted as a way to pay at the millions of retailers that accept Android Pay at the point of sale. The company will also be expanding with Visa into the Asia-Pacific region.

Dan Schulman, President and CEO of PayPal, commented:

With another quarter of strong financial results, we continue to deliver on our vision to democratize financial services for our consumers and drive the global transition from cash to digital payments. We are deepening our merchant offerings and relationships, and expanding our network of strategic partnerships to make PayPal more available in new contexts and new markets.

Shares of PayPal closed Wednesday down 0.7% at $44.41, with a consensus analyst price target of $47.30 and a 52-week trading range of $34.00 to $45.01. Following the release of the earnings report, the stock was up 5.6% at $46.90 in the after-hours trading session.

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