GET TO KNOW PAYPAL IN JUST EIGHT SLIDES

What does PayPal do?

PayPal’s technology platform allows merchants and customers worldwide to make and receive digital payments on computers, mobile devices, and in stores. The company owns several payment services including PayPal, PayPal Credit, Venmo, and Braintree. The company was recently spun off from eBay in July 2015.

PayPal’s key metrics

Active customer accounts: One of the company’s most important metrics is its number of active customers. In order to make money, PayPal needs users to make and receive payments through its platform — and the more the merrier. PayPal currently has 173 million active customer accounts. Typically, the company adds between 3 million to 5 million new active accounts per quarter.

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Transactions per active customer account: While having lots of people signed up for a PayPal account is great, having those people make lots of transactions on the platform is even better. In theory, the more transactions customers make the more money PayPal is able to earn. Right now, PayPal customers typically make 27 transactions per account.

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PayPal’s key metrics

Total payment volume: Total payment volume (TPV) measures how much PayPal's users spend on its payment platforms. The TPV can be used as an indicator of how well PayPal is growing. As the company grows customers and transactions, the total payment volume should go up as well. In Q3 2015, the TPV reached $70 billion.

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PayPal’s key metrics

How PayPal performed in the most recent quarter

• Revenue was up 15% year over year, to $2.3 billion.• Earnings per share (EPS) of $0.25, up from $0.19 in the year-ago quarter.

• The company earned a profit of $301 million.• Free cash flow increased 20% year over year, to $519 million.• Active customer accounts increased by 10%, to 173 million.• Transactions per account reached 27, up from 26 in the second quarter.

• Total payment volume (TPV) jumped 20% year over year, to $70 billion.

• 345 million mobile payments processed in the third quarter, up of 38% year over year.

• Mobile transactions accounted for 24% of all TPV in the third quarter, up from 20% a year ago.

Q3 2015

PayPal earns a percentage from most of the transactions it processes on its platform, also referred to as a take rate. In Q3 2015, PayPal’s take rate fell to 3.24%, down from 3.39% in the year-ago quarter.

Potential trouble spots

PayPal’s in the process of bringing in more customers through acquisitions and new merchant accounts, both of which have brought the company’s take rate down a bit. This isn’t necessary a huge area of concern at the moment, but investors will want to see the percentage moving up in the future.

While PayPal is a leader in the online and mobile payment processing space, the field is getting very crowded. Apple, Alphabet’s Google, Samsung, and most recently J.P. Morgan Chase, all have their own digital wallet offerings.

Major competitors

PayPal’s done a good job of expanding its services through acquisitions and new products, and it will need to continue to do so in order to fight off competition. By 2020, the total value of payments over mobile networks will reach $4 trillion. Investors should look specifically for more growth in PayPal’s mobile payments as an indicator of how well it’s convincing users to stick with its platform.

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