PayPal Holdings, Inc. PYPL recently announced the appointment of John Rainey as the new chief financial officer (CFO).
Rainey is the former executive vice president and CFO of the United Airlines UAL. He was responsible for the overall financial strategy of the company including cost management, capital allocation and balance sheet optimization. Gerry Laderman will serve as the acting CFO until United Airlines finds a replacement for Rainey.
Rainey will take office from Aug 24 replacing Patrick Dupuis, who will remain at PayPal as a senior vice president. Rainey will lead the online payment company’s financial operations, regional finance teams and investor relations.
The news comes on the heels of PayPal’s spin-off from eBay Inc. into an independent publicly traded company. Last month, PayPal started trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange post the completion of the spin-off. The separation will offer sharper focus and greater flexibility to both the companies to pursue success in their respective markets. PayPal is gearing up to make a mark for itself in the fast growing digital payment space.
Recently, PayPal acquired San Francisco-based Xoom Corporation, a digital money transfer firm. PayPal will now be able to sell international transfers to its U.S. customer base of nearly 68 million by cross-selling Xoom’s services. The buyout will also accelerate the expansion of PayPal’s services into the overseas money transfer market.
Prior to the spin-off, PayPal was the fastest growing division of eBay and even surpassed its marketplace revenues. Now, however, the going gets tough for PayPal as it is important to remember that the online payments business is moving rapidly to the mobile devices platform, where PayPal does not have a dominant presence.
PayPal already faces increasing competition from rivals like Stripe and Square, which are popular with smaller businesses, and Apple Inc.'s AAPL Apple Pay. Nevertheless, the company has several growth avenues including peer-to-peer payments, lending transactions, and money transfers.
Rainey’s wide experience in finance should be beneficial as top management needs to come up with newer strategies to succeed in the mobile payment area. We believe that Rainey's appointment comes at a crucial time as PayPal is gearing up to successfully operate and expand as an independent company.
PayPal currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). A stock that is performing well at the current level is Attunity, Ltd. ATTU, carrying a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).
Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >>
Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report
Be the first to comment