Payments stock PayPal Holdings (PYPL) managed to land a bit of a boost today as Loop Capital analysts started coverage. While the coverage was not expressly positive, it was not negative, either. That was good enough for investors, who gave PayPal stock a fractional boost in Tuesday morning’s trading.
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Loop Capital analysts started their coverage of PayPal with a Hold rating and a price target of $46 per share. It launched this coverage at the same time as several other companies in the payments space, including Block (XYZ) and Visa (V). In general, Loop analysts looked for the payments market to offer positive results, but cautioned potential investors about volatility issues.
Indeed, analysis from a different analyst revealed that PayPal has something of a mixed bag going for it right now. There are some execution risks in Branded Checkout, PayPal’s primary business. Currently, active accounts are flat, which means there is little new business, but very few users are departing the platform. Overall transaction rates, though, are down.
“A Tiny Will Ferrell”
PayPal managed to land some attention for some of its recent advertising in the United Kingdom. PayPal enlisted Will Ferrell of Saturday Night Live fame to offer up three 30-second ads in which a tiny version of Ferrell is perched on the shoulders of people poised to make financial decisions.
Ferrell appears as a tiny magician with a fondness for cards, a tiny rock star with an obsession for guitar solos, and a tiny financial advisor whose advice was very of the moment, decades ago. The ad series will run on several platforms, including digital, legacy television, and social media.
Is PayPal a Buy, Hold or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on PYPL stock based on five Buy, 25 Hold and four Sell recommendations assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 32.42% loss in its share price over the past year, the average PYPL price target of $50.71 per share implies 13.14% upside potential.
