In the past few years, it hasn’t been easy to buy PayPal Holdings Inc. shares, but on Thursday, the stock gained ground.
Mizuho analyst Dan Dolev says there are two main reasons for this. When he spoke to investors late Wednesday, CEO Alex Chriss sounded optimistic. It’s also possible that investors are starting to see the chance in PayPal’s (PYPL, +5.49%) new Fastlane product, which is meant to make guest checkout faster.
The price of PayPal’s stock went up 5.5% on Thursday, the most in a single day since January 19, when it went up 6%. The stock also gained the second most in the S&P 500 SPX that day, following Illumina Inc.’s stock ILMN, +7.42%, which rose 7.4%.
Chriss said at a Bank of America conference on Wednesday, “We’re sitting on one of the largest two-sided ecosystems in the world and have just a tremendous opportunity to leverage data and leverage this global ecosystem to delight customers, so a lasting innovation.”
It was also said that PayPal was “still the No. 1 player in branded checkout,” though there were some things that it could do better. He said, “Right now we’re falling down the most on mobile.” But he also said that PayPal thinks they can fix that by making new products.
Dolev changed his rating on PayPal shares from “neutral” to “buy” last week, mostly because he was optimistic about Fastlane. He also said that investors are starting to see more chances there.
“That Fastlane chance is really becoming known,” he told MarketWatch. “After that analysis, we’ve been getting a lot of leads from investors.”
The price of PayPal shares has only gone up 3.7% over the past year, while the S&P 500 SPX has gone up about 25%. In the past two years, they’ve lost 15%, while the S&P 500 has gained 37%.
