PayPal

Trade PayPal Stock

PayPal was created in 1998 as an electronic commerce platform, and ever since going public in 2002, the stock has been a favourite of investors. The company is involved in facilitating payments and funds transfers for users across the globe. By creating an account with PayPal and then connecting a bank account or credit card users are able to send and receive money all around the world.

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How PayPal Works

One of the goals of PayPal was not only to make moving funds quicker and easier, but it also to make online purchases more secure. It achieves this by keeping its users’ credit card and bank account numbers from being transmitted over the internet. PayPal was growing steadily in the late 1990s but really became popular thanks to its use as a payment facilitator on the auction site eBay. It was used so heavily on eBay that the company acquired PayPal and made it the official transfer service for eBay in 2002.

In 2015 PayPal was spun off as an independent entity, and investors have had access to PYPL for stock trading ever since.

PayPal Stock

As global societies have been moving away from physical cash and towards digital payment methods in the 21st century, companies that facilitate such payments have benefited greatly. Perhaps none so much as PayPal, which has positioned itself to take advantage of this trend long into the future.

PayPal Price History

PayPal Holdings (NASDAQ: PYPL) debuted on the Nasdaq exchange in July 2015 at $38 a share after being spun off from eBay. Shares remained in a range of $30 to $40 from then until the beginning of 2017, when they finally began to take off in response to significant growth in PayPal’s revenues and profits. From January 2017 to January 2018, PayPal stock went from $40.35 to $86.32 for a gain of more than 100%. Not bad for one year. 2018 was a consolidation year for the stock, with the stock remaining in a range of $86.32 to $93.44 a share before finishing the year nearly unchanged at $85.75. PayPal stock underperformed the underlying Nasdaq in 2019, with PayPal returning 28.6% while the Nasdaq returned 35.2%.

PayPal Benefits

PayPal was launched to make online shopping easier, faster, and more secure. And it has accomplished that by allowing consumers to check out at online sites without entering credit card or banking information. This speeds the check out process and makes identity theft less likely. PayPal has also been a boon for merchants, who see increased conversions for customers who use PayPal. This has been especially true for mobile purchases, which is the largest growing e-commerce segment.

PayPal for Mobile Users

The PayPal One Touch feature means users can register their hardware device and make purchases with it at millions of sites with one-click. This has made PayPal a leader in the mobile payments industry. In fact, in the second quarter of 2019 alone, PayPal facilitated over $73 billion in mobile payments. That was an increase of 37% over the same quarter the previous year, which highlights just how strong PayPal is becoming in mobile payments.

PayPal’s Network Effect

Because PayPal is a platform-based business it can see huge benefits from its network effects. So, as more merchants accept PayPal as a payment method the platform is increasingly valuable to customers. At the same time, with more customers using PayPal, it becomes increasingly valuable to merchants. This network effect creates a virtuous cycle that’s lifted PayPal’s user base by 16% annually to 295 million as of the third quarter of 2019.

Growth Prospects for PayPal

As you might guess by the size of its user base and mobile payments, PayPal is operating in a truly massive global payments ecosystem. And that’s only expected to grow, with the roughly $3.5 trillion in global e-commerce sales in 2019 expected to balloon to $6.5 trillion by 2023. PayPal’s share of this is roughly 20%, and given the network effect its market share should grow in the coming years. Even at 20% market share PayPal would be handling $1.3 trillion in transactions in 2023. PayPal’s recent growth has been greatly due to the massive growth in Venmo, which PayPal acquired in 2012. Payment volumes at Venmo, which did not begin accepting merchant payments until 2015, grew by 64% in the third quarter of 2019, to $27 billion. It’s important to note that PayPal hasn’t begun to monetize Venmo yet, but when it does the resulting revenue will be quite helpful to PayPal’s balance sheet.

Is PayPal Stock a Bargain?

It doesn’t look like it at first glance. The current P/E of over 50 is far above that of most financial services companies. However, if we look at P/E on earnings estimates for 2020, it’s a more reasonable 30. While that still sounds high initially, it isn’t unreasonable to pay that much for a company that’s a leader in its sector and is looking to grow earnings by more than 18% a year over the next five years. PayPal also has $5 billion in cash on its balance sheet to sweeten the pot.

Consider too that analysts feel PayPal shares could double in those same five years. That assumes PayPal maintains at least a 20% share of the global e-commerce payments market and its revenue grows at the same pace as e-commerce spending. With operations scaling, PayPal’s profit margins would almost certainly expand, and its net income has the potential to double. And earnings per share could grow at an even faster rate if PayPal maintains its stock repurchase plan. With those things in place, PayPal stock should double by the end of 2024, making a purchase of PYPL during the 2020-2025 time frame a good buy, especially on dips.

How to Trade PayPal Stock

With PayPal stock seemingly poised for such high growth, it’s a good candidate for purchases on dips. Traders will need to be nimble however, as a look at the daily chart of PayPal makes it clear that dips between 2018 until 2020 have been few, and quickly resolved themselves. Alternatively, more active traders will want to take a look at technical indicators such as moving averages, relative strength, oscillators, and Fibonacci ratios on shorter time frames, such as the 4-hour chart, or even the 1-hour chart for those who are extremely aggressive. These technical indicators can highlight potential short-term trading opportunities.

Disclaimer: This is a general analysis and not to be viewed or construed as actual trading advice or a recommendation of any kind and just an example of how a particular instrument could, potentially, be traded.

In Conclusion

Using Friedberg Direct and the newly updated MetaTrader 5 platform gives traders access to PayPal stock for an easy way to buy and sell based on their price analysis. Besides PYPL traders are also able to trade on hundreds of other popular equities, as well as dozens of commodities, global stock indices, and forex pairs.

Open an Friedberg Direct account and start trading PayPal stock CFDs!