PayPal outlook muted on mobile competition, currency trends

By The Business Times

PayPal Holdings Inc offered a subdued outlook on Thursday, as it faced unpredictable currency fluctuations and an increasingly competitive digital payments market.

The payments processor predicted its first-quarter revenue would be roughly in line with analyst expectations, with flat to slightly better operating margins for the full year. PayPal gave the guidance in reporting a 17 per cent rise in fourth-quarter revenue that mirrored Wall Street expectations.

Chief Financial Officer John Rainey said fourth-quarter results were hurt by currency movements, and he expected those pressures to continue throughout the year.

Paypal stock fell 2.4 per cent in after hours trading to US$40.49.

“Payments are rapidly digitizing,” he said.

“Mobile is redefining the face of retail.”

The San Jose, California-based company’s earnings report came on the same day Ant Financial Services, an affiliate of Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said it would acquire US money-transfer company MoneyGram, in a deal that is expected to shake up the international payments landscape.

Ant, the world’s largest financial-technology company, has been expanding at home and overseas as it prepares for a planned initial public offering later this year.

Meanwhile, in the United States, PayPal is facing rivals such as Zelle, a soon-to-be-launched platform backed by a consortium of large banks. Technology firms such as Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google are also looking to capture new customers through payments and money transfer services.

To fend off competition, PayPal has been expanding its network of strategic partnerships and launching or acquiring new services.

In January it announced an agreement with credit-card issuer Discover Financial Services to make it easier for PayPal customers to use Discover’s product. It also recently partnered with Citigroup Inc and Fidelity National Information Services (FIS), which represents thousands of financial institutions.

PayPal is also trying to improve its core offering by adding features like One Touch, which allows customers to pay with a single click. It now has more than 5 million active merchant accounts offering the tool.

PayPal has been available since the late-1990s, and for a long time was linked with e-commerce firm eBay Inc – giving it more brand familiarity and a much larger customer base than newcomers. But its growth is slower than startups like Venmo, which first started being used in 2009.

During the quarter, PayPal’s mobile payments rose 53 per cent, to US$31 billion. Payment volumes at Venmo, a mobile peer-to-peer payment platform popular with younger coystomers surged 126 per cent to US$5.6 billion in the fourth quarter.

PayPal’s total payments volume rose 22 per cent to US$99 billion. Active customer accounts rose 10 per cent to 197 million, beating research firm FactSet StreetAccount’s estimate of 196.5 million.

Mr Schulman said growth in mobile payments and new customer accounts helped boost fourth-quarter revenue to US$3 billion, up 17 per cent compared with a year earlier, the same as what analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S had expected.

The company expects first-quarter revenue to land in a range of US$2.9 billion to US$2.95 billion. Analysts were expecting US$2.95 billion, on average.

Net income rose to US$390 million, or 32 US cents per share, from US$367 million, or 30 US cents per share, a year earlier. On an adjusted basis, the company earned 42 US cents per share.

PayPal operates in many geographic markets around the globe, with half of its revenue coming from overseas. It tries to hedge against currency-related losses using financial instruments.

But in the fourth-quarter, declines in the euro and Australian dollar hurt PayPal’s results, Mr Rainey said. The company expects more pain this year as it adjusts its currency positions, especially in the first half, he added.

PayPal is on its second stint as a public company after separating from eBay in 2015.

REUTERS

First appeared at TBT