Citing uncertainty, PayPal leaves full-year guidance unchanged

Venmo parent PayPal is up slightly after posting mixed earnings and emphasizing that its focus on profitability over growth will help it weather growing uncertainty for the economy.

The company reported first-quarter earnings per share of $1.33, better than the $1.16 Wall Street had expected. But sales were a slightly soft $7.79 billion, compared to the $7.85 billion that analysts had penciled in.

PayPal didn’t raise its full-year forecast for earnings, either. CEO Alex Chriss explained:

“We had a great start to the year and expect a solid second quarter, which would result in the first half coming in above our prior expectations. However, given it is early in the year and because of the current level of macro uncertainty, we are maintaining our guidance for the full year at this time.”

Investors seem more or less comfortable with that. Shares rebounded after a premarket slump, perhaps soothed by the company’s disclosure in a conference call that less than 2% of its “total payments volume” — the company’s preferred earnings metric — comes from China. That seemed to have assuaged worries that the end of the de minimis tax exemption that the Trump administration is killing off on May 2 could pose a risk to the company, as it has for Chinese companies like Shein and Temu.