What Makes PayPal Holdings (PYPL) an Attractive Investment?

Horos Asset Management, an investment management firm, published its fourth quarter 2022 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. During the fourth quarter, Horos Value Internacional fund gained 13.7% compared to the benchmark’s return of 0.8% while the yearly return of the fund was 4.9% compared to a 13.0% decline for the benchmark. On the other hand, Horos Value Iberia gained 12.1% in the quarter and fell -5.2% in 2022, compared to an 11.9% gain over the quarter and a 2% rise in the year for the benchmark. In addition, check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2022.

Horos Asset Management highlighted stocks like PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL) in the Q4 2022 investor letter. Headquartered in San Jose, California, PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL) is a digital technology platform. On March 17, 2023, PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL) stock closed at $72.99 per share. One-month return of PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL) was -2.24%, and its shares lost 36.34% of their value over the last 52 weeks. PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL) has a market capitalization of $82.579 billion.

Horos Asset Management made the following comment about PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL) in its Q4 2022 investor letter:

“As I mentioned at the beginning of this quarterly letter, we took advantage of the meltdown in technology platforms to initiate new positions in companies in which we had already been shareholders in the past and whose valuation did not, until now, provide a sufficiently high margin of safety. Such is the case of PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL) and Baidu.

PayPal is one of the world’s largest online payment companies and the leader (ex-China) among digital wallets. The company operates on both sides of a transaction, offering services that facilitate buying for its users and selling for merchants, acting as a payment gateway. In recent years, PayPal has expanded its ecosystem, organically and inorganically, into other financial services (business and consumer lending, remittances, fraud prevention, dataphones, card payments, etc.) and marketing (discounts, targeted campaigns, etc.). Its most successful current products are probably Venmo (an app with services like PayPal, but with a social network component, which successfully attracts a younger audience), Braintree (payment gateway) and its interest-free consumer finance service (Buy Now, Pay Later).

This rich ecosystem has allowed PayPal to continue its high growth in recent years, reaching 432 million active accounts (of which some 35 million correspond to merchants) by the end of the third quarter of 2022, as well as increasing the attractiveness for its customers, as evidenced by the record number of transactions per account recorded in the latest earnings release. In addition to this, PayPal has achieved a historic milestone, reaching an agreement with Amazon that will allow its customers to buy products with Venmo’s payment service. However, not all has been good news for PayPal in recent years. The reality is that this growth has not been accompanied by the operating leverage that was expected, which contributed to the negative sentiment towards the company in 2022, already elevated due to the burst in the tech sector valuations and the recessionary environment in many economies where PayPal operates. However, the management team has taken action and is starting a series of initiatives to expand margins significantly over the next few years. This turnaround, coupled with a (now) very attractive valuation, led us to reinvest in the company.”

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PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL) is in 17th position on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 115 hedge fund portfolios held PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL) at the end of the fourth quarter which was 126 in the previous quarter.

We discussed PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL) in another article and shared the list of most promising fintech stocks to buy. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 2022 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.