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Hyunsoo Rim

PayPal craters on earnings miss, weak 2026 outlook, and leadership change

PayPal fell over 16% in premarket trading Tuesday after the digital payments company posted weaker-than-expected Q4 results and 2026 profit guidance, alongside a surprise leadership change.

For the quarter ended December 31, revenues increased 4% year on year to $8.7 billion, missing the $8.8 billion estimate, while adjusted earnings per share rose 3% to $1.23, also below the expected $1.28, per LSEG. The company forecast full-year adjusted profit for 2026 to decline in the “low-single digits” or be “slightly positive,” well below Wall Street forecasts for roughly 8% growth.

Results were dragged down by softer US retail spending and a slowdown in its online branded checkout business, which PayPal said grew “below our expectations,” rising just 1% year over year in Q4, down from 6% a year earlier.

Separately, PayPal said its CEO, Alex Chriss, will be replaced by HP CEO Enrique Lores, effective March 1. “While some progress has been made in a number of areas over the last two years, the pace of change and execution was not in line with the Board’s expectations,” the company said in a statement.

In December, PayPal announced it applied to become a US bank with the FDIC and Utah regulators to support small-business lending, adding to its existing European banking license.

Results were dragged down by softer US retail spending and a slowdown in its online branded checkout business, which PayPal said grew “below our expectations,” rising just 1% year over year in Q4, down from 6% a year earlier.

Separately, PayPal said its CEO, Alex Chriss, will be replaced by HP CEO Enrique Lores, effective March 1. “While some progress has been made in a number of areas over the last two years, the pace of change and execution was not in line with the Board’s expectations,” the company said in a statement.

In December, PayPal announced it applied to become a US bank with the FDIC and Utah regulators to support small-business lending, adding to its existing European banking license.

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Matt Phillips
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Max Knoblauch

Hertz climbs on announcement it’s expanding its car sales to eBay

Rental car giant Hertz is up more than 4% on Tuesday morning, following an announcement that it will list more than 8,000 vehicles for sale on eBay (soon, possibly, to be Ryan Cohen’s GameStop’s eBay).

Hertz, which operates dozens of physical car sales locations across the US, partnered with Amazon last year to sell its used vehicles on the Amazon Autos platform.

Hertz Car Sales Continues Retail Expansion with Digital Showroom on eBay

Hertz, which operates dozens of physical car sales locations across the US, partnered with Amazon last year to sell its used vehicles on the Amazon Autos platform.

markets
Luke Kawa

Sterling Infrastructure spikes as management hikes profit guidance by 42% on data center building boom

Sterling Infrastructure is going parabolic on Tuesday after delivering blowout Q1 results that prompted management to significantly revise up its full-year view.

Q1 sales beat estimates by nearly 40%, with adjusted EBITDA exceeding the consensus call by almost 50%.

As such, the firm boosted the midpoint of its full-year guidance for sales by 20% and its adjusted EBITDA by 42%.

The construction company’s E-Infrastructure Solutions business is on fire thanks to the data center boom, posting revenue growth of 174% with its signed backlog also up 123% versus the same quarter a year ago.

“We’re in the early innings, but the projects are extremely big, they’re coming out extremely quickly,” CEO Joseph Cutillo said on the conference call. “And we see not only this year, next year, but what our core customers and key customers are talking about starting ’28, ’29.”

markets
Helena Cheng

PayPal tumbles as management warns of weak 2026 trends, says turnaround plan will take “a few months” to define

PayPal reported Q1 results that were modestly ahead of analyst estimates, but shares sank after management warned of seeing trends at the “low end” of its full-year guidance.

Key numbers:

  • Adjusted earnings per share of $1.34 (compared to analyst estimates of $1.27).

  • Revenue of $8.4 billion (estimate: $8.1 billion).

Management plans to cut costs and jobs, with new CEO Enrique Lores aiming to engineer a turnaround for the payments company, whose stock was down double digits this year heading into the report.

PayPal is seeking to accelerate its adoption of AI to cut costs and generate at least $1.5 billion in savings over the next two to three years, according to a statement on Tuesday. Per Bloomberg, PayPal is targeting a workforce reduction of about 20%.

“We need to recommit to the fundamentals. That includes becoming a technology company again,” Lores said during the conference call, adding that it “will take a few months to completely define our new plan.”

markets
J. Edward Moreno

Coinbase CEO: Company cutting 14% of employees

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the company is cutting 14% of its workforce, citing volatile crypto markets and artificial intelligence, saying he is “rebuilding Coinbase as an intelligence, with humans around the edge aligning it.”

The cuts will impact about 700 employees and will be “substantially complete in the second quarter of 2026,” the company said in a regulatory filing. The restructuring will cost up to $60 million.

Armstrong said Coinbase will have fewer layers of management and lean heavily on AI. He said that engineers and nontechnical workers at Coinbase have been able to enhance their work with AI already.

The move comes as the company is scheduled to report earnings results on Thursday. The crypto bear market has been a headwind for the company in recent quarters, with analysts expecting the company’s Q1 profits to decline by 58% year over year.

Shares rose as much as 8% in premarket trading after the announcement. The company is down over 14% since the start of the year through yesterday’s close.

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