PayPal Holdings, Inc. Common Stock Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference 2026

All right. We are going to get started with the next session. Joining us next is Enrique Lores, President and Chief Executive Officer of PayPal. Enrique, thank you for joining us today. Really excited about the conversation.

No, thank you for having me here.

All right. Before we get started, I am just going to read a quick disclaimer. Please note that Enrique's remarks may include forward-looking statements. Please refer to the company's SEC filings, including its most recent Form 10-K and 10-Q, for a discussion of risks and certainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. All right. Enrique, you are roughly 6 months in. It has been a busy first few months. It is a two-part question. What has genuinely surprised you positively or negatively since moving from the board seat to the CEO seat? When you compare your day one hypothesis to where you sit today, where do you have more conviction? Where has the problem turned out to be harder or take longer than you initially assumed?

Sure. First of all, I think when I joined the company, I knew that there were some things that needed to be fixed, but I also knew that there were key assets and that the company operates in key growth markets. When I look at this before becoming CEO, I realized that the company strength and scale that we had, the number of loyal customers that we had was really difficult to replicate. The global presence that we had and the ability to transact in multiple countries at that scale was really a very valuable asset. As I started to dig into the company, I realized that there were some things that needed to be fixed. First of all, I have talked about this other times, the company was operating.

We had a fairly complex operating model with four dimensions, product, customer, regions, and functions, that really got in the way of executing and performing effectively. One of the big learnings also as I started was to realize that even if one of the key strengths of PayPal as a company is the fact that it's a two-sided network, the majority of the investment, the majority of attention of the company for some time had been on the merchant side, not on the consumer side. Changing that has been one of the key priorities that we have driven during the last months. As I think about what we have done during the last six months, I think they are aligned to five big changes that I think we need to drive in the company. Change number one is a change in the business model.

We have been relying on branded checkout as a source of profit for the company. We are rebalancing that, and we see a big opportunity across the full portfolio in financial services and expanding into this space.

Yeah. Second big change is the opportunity that we have to grow both Venmo and Braintree, two growing markets where we see opportunities to do better.

Third is what I was mentioning before about the need to rebalance our focus to the consumer side, which I'm sure we will be talking more along the discussion.

Great. Before we get further into it, maybe we can address some of the questions around industry consolidation head-on. There's been a number of news headlines over the last couple of months. I think most people know the context. Maybe if you could talk about how you are thinking about strategic alternatives for the company, and then as it relates to the company's standalone performance, what are you measuring those alternatives against?

Sure. First of all, as we have said before, we, management team and the board, have one objective, which is to maximize shareholder value, looking at all the potential options. What we did and what we have done is to first look at the strategy that we have confidence in the strategy that we have, and use this as a benchmark to compare any other alternatives. As alternatives have come and may come in the future, this is going to be the benchmark that we'll have. How does the alternative compare to the value that we think we're going to be able to create? We will always objectively recommend whatever option we think is better. This has been our approach, and this will continue to be our approach. At this point, our focus is in executing our plan.

We think we have an opportunity to create significant value to shareholders, and this is what we are doing.

Understood. Okay. Let's just hit on the broader macro environment. A lot of questions around spending levels, both in the U.S. and around the world. What have you seen in August and September quarter to date in the spend data? Specifically, there's been a lot of questions around the European tariff environment, de minimis. Maybe if you could talk through what you're seeing and the exposures there.

Sure. I think overall, the trends that we have seen are fairly aligned to what we saw in former quarters, and the expectations that we had when the quarter started. I think we have continued to see strong demand in the U.S., and probably the only area where what is happening is slightly different from what we were expecting at the beginning of the quarter is the impact that tariffs are having in Europe. They are impacting mostly customers that are doing cross-border business, especially from China, which is in some countries in Europe, a significant part of our business. Our original expectation was that this was going to have between half a point and one point of impact on TPV growth. We have seen bigger impact and probably happening for a longer period of time than we were expecting at the beginning.

And this is why when we look at what is our expectation for branded checkout growth this quarter, we think it's going to be in the 1%-2% range, driven by this impact that we see happening in Europe. Despite that, given the diversification that we have been driving in the business and that we will continue to drive, we continue to remain confident in the guide that we provide both for EPS and transaction margin growth, both for the quarter and for the year.