‘Exogenous’ Factors Crimped PayPal’s 2021 Growth: CEO

Though 2021 was “one of the strongest years in PayPal’s history,” with 18% year-over-year revenue growth to $25.4 billion, “exogenous” factors “did impact our results,” said CEO Dan Schulman on a Q4 call Tuesday. “Supply chain issues disproportionately impacted our cross-border volumes and our small business merchants,” while inflationary pressures “impacted spending within certain segments of our user base,” he said. Rising threats from COVID-19's delta and omicron variants cut travel and event bookings, and the elimination of government stimulus “had an impact as well” on consumer spending, said Schulman. “E-commerce growth rates during the holiday season were lower than industry expectations despite a strong two-year growth rate of almost 50%, and we are also lapping some of the strongest quarters of growth in our history. Even so, we once again grew our market share and came within our revenue guidance for the quarter.” The stock plunged 24.6% Wednesday, closing at $132.57.