PayPal Holdings (NASDAQ:PYPL), a global digital payments and wallet platform, closed at $55.52, up 17.20%. Reports of a $60.50 takeover offer from Stripe and Advent International drove the move, and investors are watching whether the bid advances. Trading volume reached 89.3M shares, coming in about 446% above its three-month average of 16.4M shares. PayPal Holdings IPO’d in 2015 and has grown 51% since going public.
How the markets moved today
S&P 500 (SNPINDEX:^GSPC) closed at 7,571, up 0.36%, while the Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX:^IXIC) ended at 26,269, up 0.62%. In digital payments and transaction processing, Visa (NYSE:V) closed at $355.14, down 0.25%, as PayPal outpaced sector rivals on takeover speculation.
What this means for investors
After months of M&A speculation, PayPal finally received a tangible buyout offer from payments peer Stripe and private equity firm Advent International. Despite today’s bump, PayPal is still 82% below its 2021 high, so it is not a slam dunk that shareholders will automatically accept the deal. Prediction market Polymarket currently has odds of 60% that Stripe will acquire all or part of PayPal.
As a longstanding PayPal shareholder, a potential deal is bittersweet, but it was quite clear that the company’s high-growth days were in the rearview mirror. Personally, I am not in a rush to sell my shares as PayPal remains a cash-generating machine trading at what I think is a deeply discounted valuation. However, if the deal falls through, PYPL stock could fall in tandem, so I certainly understand why some investors would cash in.
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