Fast forward to 2026: PayPal just fired its CEO, the stock is sitting at its lowest level since 2017 (sub-$44), and the company is trading at ~7.4x forward earnings.
A few years ago, the narrative was that PayPal was a long-term fintech winner with strong leadership and a durable moat. That did not age well.
They monetized it as a data farm instead of a financial service, which was fine when literally everyone isn’t running a data farm