Banking, finance, and taxes

Were PayPal's Q2 Earnings Good Enough?

Chris Lange

Published: July 27, 2017 10:20 am

Last Updated: January 12, 2020 9:42 am

When PayPal Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL) reported its second-quarter financial results after the markets closed on Wednesday, the online payment giant posted $0.46 in earnings per share (EPS) and $3.14 billion in revenue. That compared with consensus estimates of $0.42 in EPS and $3.1 billion in revenue.

During the reported quarter, the firm noted 6.5 million active customer accounts added, with net new additions up 80%, ultimately ending the period with 210 million active customer accounts, including 17 million merchant accounts.

At the same time, 1.8 billion payment transactions were processed, an increase of 23% from last year. There were a total of 32.3 payment transactions per active account on a trailing 12 month basis.

PayPal also had a total payment volume of $106 billion, which was up 23% from last year, or 26% on a currency-neutral basis.

In terms of guidance, the company expects to see EPS in the range of $0.42 to $0.44 and revenues between $3.14 billion and $3.19 billion. The consensus estimates call for $0.42 in EPS and $3.13 billion in revenue for the coming quarter.

Dan Schulman, president and CEO of PayPal, commented:

The accelerating and extensive scale of our two-sided global platform creates a strong foundation for PayPal’s growth, enabling consumers and merchants to transact in new contexts and across operating systems, technologies and platforms. Our strong results reflect PayPal’s transformation from a single product to a platform company, from a vendor to a strategic partner to both merchants and ecosystem players, and from a checkout option to an increasingly more central way for consumers to manage and move their money.

Shares of PayPal were last seen trading up fractionally at $59.00, with a consensus analyst price target of $56.50 and a 52-week range of $36.28 to $59.38.