Heisenberg
Stock Chartist, Long/Short Ideas
PayPal should hold a floor now that Stripe's dropped $60.50 offer put a value on it, making a return to the $30s unlikely. The very lows should be the low to mid $40s; with nearly 500 million global daily active users, it looks too cheap for an acquirer to pass up, and it could make Elon Musk's X a force. Without more takeover talks, though, it could bleed lower to fill the gap toward its $47 pre-bid price. x.com x.comÂ
A higher bid for PayPal looks likely sooner rather than later, around $80 plus or minus $5. Stripe wants to be a powerhouse not just in processing but in banking and fintech, using PayPal and Venmo synergies. A sale near $60 a share, despite a 57% premium to recent lows, would be a big loss for PayPal and a big win for Stripe. x.comÂ
PayPal's raised earnings and free-cash-flow guidance supports rejecting Stripe and Advent's $60.50-per-share offer. The shares now trade around $57, below the rejected bid, but that does not make the rejection a mistake. x.comÂ
PayPal is worth much more than Stripe's reported $53 billion takeover offer, and its board reportedly rejected the bid as inadequate. PayPal makes over $5 billion a year and is growing, buys back about 7% of its shares annually, and traded at just 9x earnings before the news and 11x the offer. $75 a share should be the bare minimum, and a bidding war may follow. x.comÂ
PayPal is better off sold, because management has been unable to use the company's data while Stripe and Advent can. Even at Stripe's $60.50 acquisition price, most PayPal investors will still be in the red; only those all in at the bottom would make about 50%, while most AI names have risen much more. Selling losers is the better path. x.com x.com x.comÂ
PayPal's large put-selling accumulation now has an explanation: Stripe and Advent have offered to buy it for $53 billion, per Reuters. The stock also fits a hardware-to-software rotation theme. x.comÂ
PayPal offers a low-probability but very high-reward asymmetric setup, as Stripe's now-dead $60 offer left long-dated options dirt cheap. January 2028 call volatility sits near a historically low 23%, so even a return to average would move premiums sharply. The new CEO's incentives start unlocking at $83 and rise to about $123, with progress likely expected within 12-15 months. A turnaround to $100+ is hard after recent years; the stock sits above key moving averages, near a golden cross. x.com … Show more
PayPal's near-flat growth and rising checkout competition leave it a Grade C, prove-it story. Q3 FY26 revenue rose just 2%; operating income fell 8% as restructuring charges rose from $69 million to $255 million, and net income fell 14%. The business still earns over $1 billion a quarter, but it is treading water. x.comÂ
PayPal's downside finally looks done after a 10-year round trip, leaving the stock undervalued at a P/E of 8 and a PEG ratio of 0.8. A solid Q2 report could start a recovery back to $60+. x.comÂ
PayPal was already stupid cheap and now has a partnership with Meta's Muse, yet its stock hasn't moved. Per a quoted post, Shopify rose 15% in two days on its own Muse partnership, since agentic AI could make discoverability easier. x.comÂ
PayPal is a low-switching-cost, low-moat business headed for secular decline as payment fees race to the bottom. In 2021 it wanted to buy Pinterest for $45B; now Stripe reportedly wants to buy it for $53B. Stripe is probably the best suitor by far, as a good tuck-in acquisition. x.com x.comÂ
PayPal likely has a floor now, given its new Anthropic partnership and the potential split of Venmo. Per @StockSavvyShay, PayPal and Anthropic are launching AI training for small businesses, including a free course and a Claude for Small Business plugin that connects Claude to PayPal, QuickBooks, HubSpot and Canva for tasks like invoicing and refunds. x.comÂ
