PayPal Bulls & Bears Debate Growth Outlook, Valuation

Paypal Holdings Inc PYPL has been a top performer in 2020, gaining 78.1% year to date. This week, Bank of America analyst Jason Kupferberg hosted a bull-bear debate concerning PayPal, and he highlighted the major takeaways in a note to clients.

Kupferberg said PayPal was already benefiting from structural shifts in payments prior to the pandemic, but the pandemic has served to accelerate digital payment demand. PayPal’s growth has accelerated across the board since April, and the stock’s bullish momentum reflects that phenomenon.

What Investors Say: Kupferberg said the 150 investors that participated in the PayPal debate were decidedly bullish on the stock overall, suggesting investor sentiment is fairly strong at the moment.

However, PayPal bears highlighted the stock’s lofty valuation, signs that e-commerce growth is slowing and the potential for extremely difficult comps in 2021 as reasons to avoid the stock.

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In a survey conducted prior to the debate, 75% of participants indicated they were long PayPal, while only 4% indicated they were short. The median investor estimate for non-GAAP fiscal 2020 EPS was $5.98, slightly ahead of Bank of America’s estimate of $5.74.

What The Analyst Says: At the end of the debate, Kupferberg said he remains squarely in the bull camp.

“We view PayPal as the best pure-play on e/mCommerce, which we believe will continue to take share from the much larger in-store market,” he wrote in the note.

Bank of America has a Buy rating and $235 price target for PayPal.

Benzinga’s Take: Perhaps the bulls best case for avoiding the stock is simply how bullish the group of debaters seemed to be overall. Investor sentiment is historically a contrarian indicator for stocks, and the fact that there was such bullish sentiment during the debate could be a sign that PayPal may soon take a breather from its 2020 rally.