PayPal names Enrique Lores CEO amid rocky Q4
PayPal said HP veteran Enrique Lores will become President and CEO March 1 to replace Alex Chriss, who was CEO for more than two years. PayPal's board said the company needed to compete better.
"The Board has a fundamental belief that PayPal's long-term success is grounded in its global scale, data, and the strength of its consumer, merchant, and partner relationships, combined with the quality and speed of its execution. In an increasingly competitive landscape, the company's value proposition is delivered through the combined power of its two-sided platform, operational rigor, risk capabilities, and developer experience."
Lores said PayPal "will further strengthen the culture of innovation necessary to deliver long-term transformation and balance this with near-term delivery, executing with greater speed and precision, and holding ourselves accountable for consistent delivery quarter on quarter."
That execution wasn't evident in PayPal's fourth quarter. PayPal's fourth quarter missed estimates and its outlook was week.
PayPal reported non-GAAP fourth quarter earnings of $1.23 a share on revenue of $8.7 billion, up 4% from a year ago. Wall Street was looking for non-GAAP earnings of $1.29 a share on revenue of $8.79 billion.
For fiscal 2025, PayPal reported earnings of $5.41 a share on revenue of $33.2 billion, up 4%. Active accounts at the end of the year were up 1% to 439 million.
As for the outlook, PayPal said it expects non-GAAP earnings to decline in the low single digits or be slightly positive. Non-GAAP earnings in the first quarter will also decline from a year ago and fall short of estimates.
It's unclear what happens to PayPal's agentic commerce roadmap and AI initiatives under Chriss. PayPal appears to be being disrupted by competition and agentic commerce.
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For HP's part, the company said Bruce Broussard, a member of the company’s Board of Directors since 2021, has been appointed interim CEO while a search for a new leader is underway. HP reaffirmed its outlook.
About Larry Dignan: Dignan was most recently Celonis Media’s Editor-in-Chief, where he sat at the intersection of media and marketing. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of ZDNet and has covered the technology industry and transformation trends for more than two decades, publishing articles in CNET, Knowledge@Wharton, Wall Street Week, Interactive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Temple University and a member of the Advisory Board for The Fox Business School's Institute of Business and Information Technology. Constellation Insights does the following: Cover the buy side and sell side of enterprise tech with news, analysis, profiles, interviews, and event coverage of vendors, as well as Constellation Research's community and…...
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