PayPal Stock Price | PYPL Stock Quote, News, and History | Markets Insider (2024)

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* Average Estimates in Million (e.g. Revenue) or per share (e.g. Dividend). Source: FactSet

PayPal stock price has continuously increased at a steady rate over the past years. In the long term, the PayPal stock price has increased from about $35 to $64.03 (a/o 4/10/17), increasing roughly 75% in two-years’ time. The majority of the increase has taken place over the first three quarters of 2017. Looking at PayPal stock price chart for 2015 you would see a relatively flat line, with the exception of two very noticeable drops around the end of Q2 and Q3 of 2015. These two drops reflect the uncertainty that started during and immediately after PayPal completely split from its former parent company, eBay.

Shortly after the Paypal’s IPO, it was acquired by eBay in July of 2002 for roughly $1.5 billion and valued at $23 a share. There was a lot of speculation around why the two companies split. PayPal indicated it was because eBay and PayPal wanted to be two stand-alone companies in order to capitalize on their individual growth opportunities. After the spin-off, many investors did not see the company growing as expected, and a massive sell-off of the PayPal stock ensued, leading to PayPal stock price falling as low as $30.82.

The company did recover, thanks to the steady increase of users and having a consistent stock price for 2016 and the beginning of 2017, trading between $35 and $40. In the short-term period, more or less from Q2 of 2017, PayPal stock price started growing rapidly, reaching the $64.03 in May 2017. Given the short time frame and the constant growth many have begun to analysts have suggested reasons for the root cause of this. Many believe it is due to the increasing popularity of electronic payment methods, an industry that PayPal bootstrapped several years ago. The industry is now given birth to fierce competition and many other companies have started dipping their toes in the water with systems very similar to PayPal’s such as Google’s Google Wallet and Apple’s Apple Pay

It is reasonable to expect, if no significant change happens to the e-commerce sector, PayPal stock price will continue its constant climb upwards. While nothing is certain, it is reasonable to expect electronic payments and digital currencies to become even more popular. While physical currency’s contribution to the overall economy is gradually reduced; under these circ*mstances, PayPal’s user base would surely get larger to reflect this increasing popularity, increasing the company’s economic importance and driving PayPal stock price higher. Paypal’s acquisition of Venmo has also put them in a better position, capturing the millennial market. With a 50% growth in the PayPal stock price since the beginning of the 2017, the company is already occupying a large portion of the electronic industry and it doesn’t look like they will be slowing down any time soon.

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