PayPal beats the street on Q1 sales of $2.54B and EPS of $0.37

by Ingrid Lunden for techcrunch

Payments giant PayPal posted strong Q1 earnings today, counter balancing some of the weaker showings from other tech stocks yesterday and outstripping the overall growth rate of e-commerce, in its own words. Following in the footsteps of its former parent, which also posted strong results for Q1, PayPal posted revenues of $2.544 billion with non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.37, rising 19% and 28% respectively on a year ago and both beating analysts’ projections of $2.5 billion and $0.35 EPS.

“Our first quarter results continue to demonstrate the power of our global payments platform to attract and engage consumers, increasing our global scale and in turn attracting new merchants and partners to PayPal,” said Dan Schulman, President and CEO of PayPal, in a statement. “Our focus on payments and ability to innovate for merchants and consumers continues to differentiate PayPal and drive our growth in a dynamic and competitive environment.”

However, a graphic in its presentation also points to the fact that sequentially, payment volume was down on last month:

Revenues were also down slightly sequentially.

The company says it has 184 million customers now, up by 4.5 million, with 1.4 billion transactions in the quarter up 26% on a year ago. Services like Venmo and the company’s expansion into credit and other services has given the company a life on average transactions per customer, which were up 12% to 28 payments per user, and $81 billion in total payment volume.

That $81 billion in TPV, it said, “was faster than the growth rate of e-commerce.”

On the merchant side, there are now 14 million active accounts.

When it comes to new-wave revenues, PayPal is showing some of its legacy: the company only completes 26% of transactions on mobile devices today, versus 22% a year ago.

The company also said that it was keeping full-year guidance and for Q2 expects revenues of between $2.570 and $2.620, up 12%-14% on a year ago; with non-GAAP EPS of between $0.34 and $0.36.

More to come during the call.

First appeared at techcrunch