PayPal Holdings Inc (PYPL) — Q1 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you, Chris. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. Welcome to PayPal's earnings conference call for the first quarter of 2022. Joining me today on the call are Dan Schulman, our President and CEO; and John Rainey, our Chief Financial Officer and EVP, Global Customer Operations. We're providing a slide presentation to accompany our commentary. This conference call is also being webcast, and both the presentation and call are available on our Investor Relations website. In discussing our company's performance, we will refer to some non-GAAP measures. You can find the reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in the presentation accompanying this conference call. Management will make forward-looking statements that are based on our current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions and involve risks and uncertainties. These statements include our guidance for the second quarter and full year 2022 and our medium-term outlook. Our actual results may differ materially from these statements. You can find more information about risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could affect our results in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC and available on our Investor Relations website. You should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. All information in this presentation is as of today's date, April 27, 2022. We expressly disclaim any obligation to update this information. With that, let me turn the call over to Dan.

Thank you, Gabrielle, and thank you all for joining us. We have a lot to discuss today. Before I begin my official comments, I want to express how saddened we are by the events occurring in Ukraine. We took early steps to suspend our transactional services in Russia and promptly enabled PayPal's send and receive services in Ukraine. Since that time, our platform has facilitated nearly $100 million in aid to Ukrainian citizens and refugees. Additionally, thanks to our community's generosity, we have seen almost $0.5 billion sent through our platform to prominent nonprofit organizations aiding Ukraine. Situations like these highlight the vital role our platform and services play for those in need. This afternoon, I will briefly discuss our first quarter results and then provide a strategic update along with our outlook for the upcoming quarter and year. More detailed information about our Q1 results can be found in our investor update presentation. As many of you are aware, after nearly seven years with PayPal, John Rainey will be leaving to join Walmart's leadership team. I am happy for John, and it comes as no surprise that the leading company has acknowledged his contributions to building PayPal. John, you will be missed, and I wish you the best in your next endeavors. I'm also pleased to announce that the Board has appointed Gabrielle Rabinovitch as Interim CFO. We are all here together today and will handle the Q&A as a team. I want to start by acknowledging that our shareholders expect more from us than our recent performance has delivered, and I take full responsibility for that. The challenges posed by the pandemic and the uncertain macroeconomic landscape have complicated visibility. However, we need to do better, and you will hear more today about our commitment to improvement. Now, let me highlight our Q1 results. I’m glad to report that we achieved solid results that surpassed our guidance for revenue and earnings. The first quarter of 2021 was the strongest in our history, with revenue growth of 31% and non-GAAP EPS growth of 84%. Even with tougher comparisons, revenues increased 7% to $6.48 billion, with a 15% rise excluding eBay. U.S. revenues grew 20%, while international revenues dropped 5%. When excluding eBay, international revenue actually grew 5%, following a 47% increase in Q1 last year. Volume-based expenses rose 25%, accounting for 49% of revenue compared to 42% last year. This roughly 700 basis point increase was due to higher funding costs primarily driven by volume mix and the previous release of $84 million in credit reserves. Non-transaction-related expenses grew 8% for the quarter, making up 30% of revenue, which matched last year's figures. Investments in technology were offset by efficiencies in other non-transaction operating costs. We reported non-GAAP EPS of $0.88 for the quarter, with an additional pressure of $0.03 from our suspension of services in Russia. We also generated over $1 billion in free cash flow and returned $1.5 billion to shareholders through share repurchases. As I mentioned last quarter, we are emphasizing increased engagement with our existing customer base while also acquiring higher-value accounts. In Q1, we added 2.4 million net new active accounts, bringing our total active base to 429 million. Transactions per active account increased 11% to 47. Our Buy Now, Pay Later service continues to gain market share, achieving $3.6 billion in volume in Q1, which is a 256% increase, with over 18 million consumer accounts selecting this option since launch. We are also seeing more merchant adoption and improved transaction visibility, which will enable us to maintain strong results. Braintree performed exceptionally well again, with volumes jumping 61% due to key clients like Airbnb, Uber, DoorDash, Live Nation, vineyard vines, and TikTok, many of whom rely on us as their primary provider. Venmo also showed robust revenue growth of around 60% in Q1, with volume increasing 12% to $58 billion, following a 63% growth last year. Venmo now boasts over 85 million accounts in the U.S., and our objective this year is to increase commerce transactions on Venmo while retaining our lead in P2P payments. We are making strides in promoting Pay with Venmo transactions, business profiles, and in-store purchases with our debit and credit cards. Our integration with Amazon is progressing, and we anticipate launching in the second half of the year. Across PayPal and Venmo, we are dedicated to ensuring our digital wallets are central to our users' financial lives. Over half of our user base now has our redesigned PayPal app, with app users engaging more features and increasing average revenue per account. Customers using our digital wallet transact 25% more at checkout compared to those who don't utilize the app. More than 70% of our Buy Now, Pay Later users access the service through our digital wallet. We are nearing the completion of our savings product rollout and will introduce further financial services and commerce features in the upcoming quarters. The average revenue per account from digital wallet users is double that of customers who only use checkout, and the churn rate for these users is 25% lower. We are committed to promoting the adoption of our digital wallet, seeing it as a major growth opportunity. Collaborating with partners remains crucial to our success. We recently renewed and expanded our strategic partnerships with American Express and Citibank. Our strong relationships with these partners and others reflect our commitment to providing customers with flexible payment options through seamless integrations with our products and services. Now, let’s discuss our outlook for Q2 and the year. While we are pleased with our Q1 performance, 2022 presents challenges in forecasting. A few months ago, we indicated that persistent macro pressures might lead us toward the lower end of our range, whereas any structural improvements could push us toward the upper bounds. The macro environment has worsened since early February, with developments in Russia, Ukraine, and China increasing global uncertainty, inflation, and supply chain issues. Predicting normalized consumer e-commerce spending coming out of the pandemic is quite complex for PayPal. Therefore, we believe it is prudent to revise our 2022 guidance and reassess our medium-term outlook. For Q2, we expect about 9% revenue growth and approximately $0.86 non-GAAP EPS. We anticipate an impact of slightly more than $200 million from eBay in Q2. We also face challenging comparisons, as eBay revenue growth ex-eBay was 32% in Q2 of last year. Additionally, we had reserve releases of $156 million in Q2 2021, creating a headwind of about $0.11 on earnings growth. For the year, we now predict revenue growth of 11% to 13% and non-GAAP EPS between $3.81 and $3.93. Excluding eBay, this suggests revenue growth of around 15% to 17%. At the midpoint, this implies back-half revenue growth of 15.5%. Our updated EPS forecast reflects the revenue expectations and volume mix impacts. We now anticipate 10 million net new active accounts for the year, with positive additions expected each quarter, with Q2 being the low point. I want to provide additional context on our efforts to enhance our operating leverage. Before the pandemic, we were working on simplifying our operational model and improving efficiency. However, the pandemic shifted our focus to scaling the business and supporting unprecedented growth. We are now returning to these initiatives with renewed energy and purpose. While we aim to incorporate more discipline into our operations and enhance leverage in our business, we will also invest in growth opportunities. Our range of digital payment assets offers an unmatched advantage, and we are focused on refining and optimizing our operations to achieve more efficient growth. We expect these efforts will lead to significant savings that we can reinvest in the business to foster profitable growth. For this year, we anticipate generating over $5 billion in free cash flow. Moreover, we will continue to balance our capital allocation between organic business investments, share repurchase, and strategic acquisitions. To clarify, transformative acquisitions are not on our immediate agenda. Any foreseeable activity will focus on straightforward deals that align closely with our core skills and capabilities. Lastly, I want to address our medium-term outlook shared at our Investor Day in February 2021. We have reevaluated the achievability of our revenue and earnings targets, which were based on assumptions regarding e-commerce growth that are no longer aligned with the current trajectory. Consequently, we are withdrawing our medium-term outlook. We will keep guiding revenue and earnings on a quarterly and annual basis while updating you on our long-term strategic approach. We remain confident in our business's growth potential and in our ability to sustainably create value for our shareholders. However, we acknowledge the need to reset expectations amid this dynamic environment. The scale of our two-sided platform remains a unique advantage, and we believe in the ongoing tailwinds from the digitization of payments and e-commerce growth. We see ourselves as well-positioned to connect more merchants and consumers globally, helping them engage and transact securely. There are numerous opportunities ahead of us, given our extensive network and the continuous expansion of digital payments. We will enhance our leadership in the checkout space, work to solidify our digital wallet's prominence, and extend PayPal's tools to more in-person environments while investing in our core technologies. Hundreds of millions of consumers and tens of millions of merchants value our comprehensive products and services. We are investing in refining existing offerings and innovating for the future with advanced capabilities like enhanced loyalty programs and improved package tracking and returns management. With branded checkout and full-stack processing as the core elements of our platform, the upcoming opportunities are substantial. We believe PayPal is excellently positioned to lead the future of digital payments and commerce. We expect to continue growing revenue at a rate faster than e-commerce growth and increasing our market share in digital payments, while also focusing on enhancing operational leverage to support ongoing value creation. We aim to expedite product delivery to our customers and enhance organizational effectiveness through process simplification and accountability. We look forward to updating you on our progress as the year progresses. Now, I will hand the call back to the operator to take your questions.

And good to hear your voices. John, we will miss you, of course. Dan, this one's for you, maybe just building on how you just closed the formal remarks. Reflecting back on the challenges over these past six to eight months, what, in your view, are the top three or four things that PayPal really needs to do differently going forward to turn around the trajectory of the business?

It's great to hear from you, Lisa. I share the same sentiment about John. It has been challenging for us to accurately predict our business over the past few quarters. However, I can say that consistently over the last five years, we have gained market share, and this trend continued in Q1 across our various products and capabilities. We need to rethink our forecasting philosophy and methodology, which we've started to address this year, and we can discuss that more later. Additionally, there are a few key areas where we need to excel. We are concentrating on improving our checkout process, and I can provide more details on that later in the call, as we have several initiatives aimed at enhancing our position in checkout and exploring next-generation options. We also need to focus more on digital wallets, as we believe that's the industry's future and central to PayPal's goals regarding customer engagement. Those are two vital areas for us. Lastly, we should return to the operational focus we had before the pandemic, emphasizing simplification and accountability, while empowering our product managers to take ownership throughout the business. There are many initiatives we need to pursue, and I feel we are making progress on execution. Q1 was a step in that direction, and some of our metrics show positive signs. We must remain focused and continue driving simplification and operational efficiency in our model.

And may I also start by saying thank you to John and absolutely wish you nothing but the best. I'll ask on the outlook. I know Lisa asked a good question on what's going to change, but I'm just trying to better understand the full-year vision to revenue and EPS and where you're landing now versus 90 days ago. So it looks like the eBay assumption is the same. So how much of the change is due to macro factors versus maybe you know a little bit more about the impacts of your strategy shift? And of course, how much did conservatism play a role, recognizing, as you said, visibility is tough, and you have a CFO seat to fill, et cetera?

Sure, Tien-Tsin. I'll start. And let me first say thank you for your comments. And I think Gabrielle will probably jump in on this as well. But I'll give a little bit of color to the way that we're thinking about guidance. And so you'll recall, and Dan also referred to this in his prepared remarks, that at the last quarter, when we gave a revenue range of 15% to 17%, we very clearly said if things did not improve, we would be at the low end of that range. And that's a different approach to the guidance that we have today, insofar as we are actually assuming that things get a little worse from here. It's been challenging forecasting sort of the return or the normalization of e-commerce trends post-pandemic. We've been chasing this for a little bit, and we don't want to continue to find ourselves in that situation. So if you sort of contrast where we are today with when we gave that guidance, not only have things not improved, I think very clearly, they've gotten worse. We've got a war that's broken out in Ukraine. We've seen more supply chain issues that are acute in places like China. You've got even higher inflation now, which is, I think, disproportionately affecting our customer base that skews more towards discretionary spend versus nondiscretionary spend. All of these things affect the way that we're approaching the outlook for the year. Gabrielle, do you want to add anything?

Yes, sure. Thanks, John. So Tien-Tsin, in terms of sort of lowering the revenue outlook, in addition to what John mentioned around just the macro worsening and what that means for our overall growth expectations in our core markets, we also, to John's point, sort of took a look at what we're seeing on our own platform. That really relates to sort of e-commerce and consumer behavior. It does have that sort of macro intersection, but for us, because we have more of a discretionary platform, we do see a greater impact on the spend. Relative to how we started the year, e-commerce globally is slower than what we thought, and we're seeing that come through on our platform. We're reflecting that, and that's both in terms of just the spending patterns as well as offline/online mix. So that's sort of how we're thinking about starting the year. It's really not about our overall conviction in the secular tailwinds that support the business, but we want to be realistic about what we're seeing in-year and adjust that outlook for that. The final contributor to it on the revenue side is really that we've recalibrated our expectations on some of our initiatives at PayPal based upon those lower global growth expectations. We wanted to have a consistency in that conservatism around what we think our newer initiatives can deliver in-year given some of those macro impacts. On the EPS side, it's really a flow-through of some of these things, but maybe just something I would call out is from a volume standpoint. We are seeing outsized performance from Braintree. So that unbranded processing mix does play a role in the overall profitability of the business. We're taking down EPS, in part, for that. We're continuing to invest heavily in the areas that we think are important to drive that long-term profitable growth. This is what you're seeing sort of in terms of the overall impact to EPS. One other call-out would just be suspending transaction services in Russia does have an EPS impact as well, and we've adjusted our outlook for that.

John, I also want to wish you the best. When we look at the guidance you provided, and I understand you have withdrawn the medium-term outlook, which many investors anticipated at this stage, could you help us understand the year's progression and the exit growth rate implied by the new guidance range? Also, could you elaborate on the assumptions behind that exit rate?

Yes, sure, Darrin. I'll start off there and then see if Gabs or John want to add to it. So as I said in my remarks, what the back half implies with our 11% to 13% is a 15.5% revenue growth in the back half, so mid-teens in general, with that. And then as we think about EPS, there are a number of one-time events on our EPS growth rates. But when we think about exit, as we go into next year, just kind of on a normalized basis, it's probably in the mid-teens as well. As we think about the medium term, the thing that I talked about in my script is that we've had a long track record of taking share and growing faster than e-commerce. As you're thinking about what does that medium term look like, it really depends on your view of where e-commerce is going to come out. We'll take a look, but there are a lot of shifting estimates right now, as John mentioned, coming out of the pandemic, now coming into a high inflation macroeconomic environment that's uncertain. And the magnitude of that uncertainty is wider. We felt it was best to characterize what the company expects to do over the medium term as opposed to put out any specific numbers.

I'll just add too, Darrin, that, look, no company wants to be in the position of pulling their medium-term guidance. But when you step back and you look at the set of assumptions on which we base that medium-term guidance, they're very, very different today. That said, and perhaps I'm in a unique position to say this, that doesn't take away our conviction and the long-term value and the prospects for this business at all. There are a few companies of our size and scale in digital payments that have some of the unique attributes that we have around our cash flow generation, our revenue growth, and the margin profile that we do. We're not immune to some of these economic vagaries that we're going through right now. But we've got to respond to that. But that should not take away from how you think about our business longer-term. Again, we are perhaps the purest play in digital payments, and we're going to continue to invest appropriately to make sure that we stay that way and stay a leader in digital payments going forward.

Yes. And if I can just jump on top of John's points. At some point, these trends tend to turn as well, but when that happens is unclear. As long as we continue to invest to seize those growth opportunities, we will be beneficiaries of that when these things do change. We just want to be heads down, focused on the things we control and execute really well against them.

I wonder if you could give us an update on the kind of pivot to focusing more on customer engagement versus acquisition. Do you have all the tools that you need now to sort of execute on this shift? Is there more development or M&A or incremental technology or resources that you're going to need to dedicate to the new strategy? Or are you kind of set where you are now to make it happen?

Yes. It's such a fast-moving environment that we operate in, with constant innovation, that we're never in a place where we're not going to need to continue to innovate and invest in the business. I think we've made some really important strides in the past year or so with the advent of our digital wallet. We clearly think that the world is continuing to digitize. Yes, there's some normalization between online and offline right now. But going forward, the world continues to digitize. Disparate parts of the economy are coming together, whether that be shopping, payments, or basic financial services. The wallet is going to be one of the key elements of how we drive customer engagement, and we're going to continue to evolve the wallet. It is version 1.0 right now. There will be version 2.0 and 3.0, and we've got a number of things on our road map that we really want to execute against this year. We're already beginning to see an uptick in our engagement. For the second quarter in a row, we had 11% TPA. Excluding eBay, engagement went up 19% in the quarter. That's a pretty big move in terms of engagement. You heard the stats that I talked about in my script in terms of the increases in ARPA, the decreases in churn. Thinking about our growth going forward, 30% of our customers generate 80% of the volume on our platform. We're clearly not a subscription business; we're a transaction-based business, and growing transactions is a huge opportunity for us. We probably today have about 25% of the online financial transactions that a consumer does. There’s a ton of room for us to grow in that area. I would also say the surest way for us to grow net new actives going forward is to increase engagement. When you're at 429 million active accounts, even with a consistent churn rate year-over-year, we know that this year our churn rate will be somewhat higher because we're letting these low engaged consumers churn off the platform because the ROI to keep them isn't worth it. The more we can keep people engaged, the more we will grow our NNAs going forward. Improving checkout and improving digital wallet are the things that we'll probably be talking about for years to come, actually.

I wanted to shift over to Venmo for a minute, if I could. I know that volume growth started the year at 12%. Clearly, there was a tough comp there. I'm just wondering whether or not any of the new IRS rules around reporting of these transactions is having any impact there, how you expect Venmo volume growth to evolve during the course of the year. I know you started really strong on the revenue side, with Venmo at 60% in Q1. So is it fair to assume you still expect 50%-plus revenue growth from Venmo this year?

Yes, Jason, I think we continue to expect the 50% revenue growth for Venmo this year. To your question on the IRS change, I would say very early in the year, we did see some impact from that. We've worked a lot on customer comprehension and education. We think that's basically behind us, just in terms of what the impact could be. But we are up against really tough comps. Last year's Q1 was 63% growth for Venmo, and this year, 12%. The business has scaled to the point that it's substantially larger than what our U.S. business was coming out of separation. We continue to expect strong growth, but it will be a mix of commerce volumes and revenue as well as the P2P piece. Dan, anything to add?

I would just say they've got a strong road map ahead of them, putting in business profiles, transitioning that almost into storefronts, enabling charities to be a part of Venmo, the full debit card refreshed, revamping P2P, and improving searchability and other aspects around that. They've got a pretty full roadmap, and I think Gab summarized all the other points perfectly.

I wanted to ask about TPV. When I look at total payment volume in the quarter, I see the dichotomy between U.S. growth, up 21%, and international, only up 5%. Clearly, international is growing slower than the U.S. So wondering, when I look at the international market, what are some of the factors there that are influencing the growth rates? Is it inflation? Is the Ukraine situation bleeding into other parts of Europe? Is there any share loss? Any color on that would be great.

Yes, sure. Thanks for the question, Bryan. I think the two main drivers really are, in the first instance, actually very challenging comps. We're up against very, very tough comps from last year. So Q1 last year, international revenue growth was 38%, and it was 47% ex eBay. So that alone is one of the drivers this year. The other big piece is the eBay component. That too is playing a role. On the revenue side, international revenue growth ex eBay was up 5%, relative to the negative side that you see. It’s worth highlighting that China and the U.K. continue to be tough markets for us, and that is both the eBay migration but really embodies the macro. We saw revenue in China down more than it was in Q4, and U.K. revenue down again more than it was in Q4, and so we'll continue to watch it closely, but that definitely does have a macro layer to it.

I would like to ask about competition. Specifically, there have been some high-profile challenges reported for startups in the one-click checkout space. Could you talk a little bit about some of the benefits of PayPal's scale that may create barriers to entry among new entrants and where you're most focused as it relates to competition, if not necessarily new competitors?

Yes. As you point out, checkout is our business. I mean, you've got to be able to scale it. And it has to be perfect. Retailers depend completely on a checkout provider. If it doesn't go right, they can lose a tremendous amount of sales. The brand trust we have and our track record over time, our availability, and our fraud and risk capabilities have been honed over the last 10 or 15 years. On average, a retailer that does 100 transactions with PayPal approves six more than another checkout methodology. These make huge differences. The other thing, of course, is that it is a network effects business. The larger the scale, the more attractive the network is. When you do consumer surveys, 60% of consumers pick PayPal as their number one choice to do an online transaction. The next closest digital wallet is 8%. PayPal customers are two times more likely to shop when they see a PayPal button. For smaller merchants, having the PayPal brand is essential because in today's age, you're seeing much more e-commerce sales that are outside of local territories. The PayPal brand enables the consumer to feel confident that they've got protection and for a business, it gives them seller protections as well. We have a ton of scale advantages and experience in high authorization rates and low loss rates, which typically don't work hand in hand, but they do work that way with us. We're not resting on any of those laurels by any stretch of imagination. We're driving to improve basic hygiene, increased uptime and availability at 99.999% level, taking latency down to low single-digit seconds, simplifying our UX right now. Too often, there's a pop-up that occurs, and it takes you out of the web or the native app. You don't want to go out and then back into that app. We want to drive in-context or inline checkout. We're also thinking about the next generation of checkout. The real issue for retailers is not just can you make conversion better when a consumer gets to the product or checkout page, which, by the way, is important because every little bit matters to merchants, and we clearly lead in that area. The real issue is that less than 5 out of 100 people who go to a merchant's website actually check out. There’s a lot of drop-off before a consumer gets to the product pages or the checkout. Nobody has the amount of data and information we have on customers. We vault over one billion financial instruments on our platform. Working with retailers and consumers to surface who that consumer is, obviously with consent, so that a retailer can customize offers or deals for every customer coming on is a huge potential next generation of checkout, with a lot of interest from merchants. Nobody can really do that better than we can because of our scale and the data we have. We believe we've got a lot of good advantages right now, but we are really thinking about how do we take it to the next level and reimagine checkout.

All the best to you, John.

Thanks, David.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Dan, you clearly articulated a focus on unified commerce, in particular, a major rollout of QR codes at some of the biggest retailers in the country. Recently, we've seen consumers return to the physical point-of-sale with increased vaccination rates. Can you update us on how PayPal is positioned in unified commerce, and in particular, where you stand with the QR code rollout?

Yes. As we said from the very beginning, it's proving to be very true that in-person payments will be a long shot for us going forward. There’s no magic word to that. We are continuing to increase, every quarter, the number of retailers that offer our QR codes. Changing consumer behavior to move to mobile and mobile checkout will take time. It clearly will happen over time, but it's going to take time. Our view on this is that we really feel like putting quite a large emphasis on revamping our debit and credit card to tie in fully with our app, enabling a consumer to shop seamlessly. If it's in-store, they want to use a familiar form factor, they can do that, but it ties completely into the app. Just launched this 3-2 card, with 3% cash-back on any purchase on PayPal and 2% everywhere else, and it is a fully integrated experience. What might you be able to do with that? You might go into a store, pay with your 3-2 card, and then come into the app and do a Buy Now, Pay Later sort of thing. Flexibility on choice of how you pay, not just doing it instantaneously. You may want to split how you pay for that through rewards points and fiat currency. Tying in both using the mobile phone at point-of-sale and enabling people to use cards and tying that directly into our app is a good one-two punch as we think about moving into in-store. Clearly, Buy Now, Pay Later is exploding everywhere. We are gaining traction on that, good traction on upstream presentment, and more and more people want to use that. This plays right into our advantages as we believe we have the lowest loss rates in the Buy Now, Pay Later industry, probably the highest approval rates because we know many of the customers and a really powerful value proposition to merchants. We believe we can tie that both online and offline, and that can be a powerful combination. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. John, you heard it from everybody, but you'll hear it from us how much we will miss you as well. We look forward to working with you, I'm sure, the projection, as well. Okay, everybody. Thanks very much for your time, and we look forward to talking to you soon. Take care. Bye.