Paypal fires CEO and snaps up HP's

PayPal's board of directors is dissatisfied with the business development and has dismissed CEO Alex Chriss with immediate effect. He has not been able to persuade enough merchants to prominently display the PayPal logo at checkout, thus guiding consumers to use the payment service including expensive consumer loans. On March 1, the current Chairman of the Board, Enrique Lores, is to take over as Chief Executive Officer. In his main profession, Lores had been CEO at HP for over six years, where he had worked for three decades before that. HP's board of directors was apparently not prepared for the change and has in turn shown Lores the door immediately.

Both stocks are suffering, PayPal's shares particularly so. The stocks of both companies have been on a downward trend for about two months. PayPal has lost around 17 percent in that period, HP more than 20 percent. With Lores' sudden departure, HP shares fell another good four percent on Tuesday, making them still well-served compared to PayPal: its shares plummeted almost 20 percent on Tuesday – even though business has grown slightly and practically all operating cash flow is to be distributed in the form of share buybacks. Both stocks marked 52-week lows.

"Although certain progress has been made in numerous areas over the past two years, the pace of change and execution has not been in line with the board's expectations," explains PayPal's board of directors the personnel decision. Lores has been on the board for almost five years and has chaired it since July 2024. David Dorman will take over this role immediately.

HP will first look for a new CEO. How the stock will develop will be shown on Wednesday when HP reveals its quarterly figures. PayPal already did that on Tuesday.

PayPal's Finances

They do not meet the expectations of financial analysts. Furthermore, they are disappointed by the outlook for the current year: both margin and net profit per share are expected to decline slightly. The share buyback program of six billion dollars does not help against the stock price drop. PayPal hopes for future growth particularly through AI agents that are supposed to spend consumers' money, as well as advertising revenue and so-called stablecoins.

In 2026, 439 million PayPal and Venmo accounts were used at least once. This is an increase of one percent year-on-year. However, the average number of transactions per account has fallen by five percent. This means that the total number of transactions has decreased by four percent.

In total, the company generated revenue of 33.2 billion US dollars in 2026, an increase of four percent. Of this, 6.1 billion dollars remained as operating profit (+14%) and 6.4 billion as operating cash flow (-14%). Consequently, cash reserves have decreased by around five percent or approximately half a billion dollars. Thanks to a lower tax rate and non-operating income, net profit has nevertheless jumped by 26 percent to 5.2 billion dollars.

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