Payments company PayPal reported a fantastic third quarter today. Rising payment volumes, and an increase in the number of users leveraging the platform, has led to results that have surpassed even analyst expectations. Of course, investments in MercadoLibre and Uber led to a negative impact on the results, however for PayPal in Q3, the positives far outweighed the negatives.
If we take a look at the changes in the payment company’s userbase, it added a total of 9.8 Mn new peeps. This takes the total up to 295 Mn, which for a payments company is a pretty big achievement, leading to a total payment volume (TPV) of $179 billion, an increase of 25%.
In numerical terms, this translates into a total revenue of $4.38 Bn, or a quarterly growth of 19% y-o-y. The company’s GAAP net income also marked a growth of almost 7% y-o-y, resulting into $462 Mn, or 39 cents per share, while the non-GAAP income figure stood at 61-cents per share.
Interestingly, without the impact from the couple of negative investments PayPal made, it’s GAAP net income would have stood at 54 cents per share, while non-GAAP would have been at 76-cents. However, the company has been operating along an aggressive expansion strategy of late and that definitely involves at least some risks.
With only one more quarter left in the fiscal year, PayPal is pretty hopeful about its yearly results. One of the reasons behind this optimistic outlook could be it’s recent acquisition of GoPay. The Chinese payments service provider has now given PayPal direct inroads into one of the biggest economies of the world. What’s more, being the first foreign company in the country, it will find itself enjoying a virtual monopoly, although of course, there would be domestic players to compete with.
The company expects a $3+ dividend per share, on a net revenue of approximately $17.7 Bn.
