NextFin News - In a decisive move to arrest a multi-year stagnation in its core business, PayPal Holdings Inc. announced on Tuesday, February 3, 2026, that it has appointed Enrique Lores as its new President and Chief Executive Officer. Lores, who has served as the CEO of HP Inc. for the past six years and has been a PayPal board member for five, will officially assume the role on March 1, 2026. He replaces Alex Chriss, the former Intuit executive who was brought in less than three years ago to spark a turnaround that ultimately failed to meet the board's expectations for speed and execution. The announcement coincided with a fourth-quarter earnings report that missed Wall Street targets, sending PayPal’s stock plunging more than 18% to its lowest levels since early 2017.
According to Investor's Business Daily, PayPal reported fourth-quarter earnings per share of $1.23 on revenue of $8.68 billion, both of which fell short of analyst estimates of $1.29 per share and $8.79 billion respectively. More concerning for investors was the company’s 2026 guidance, which projected adjusted earnings per share to remain flat or decline slightly, contrasting sharply with consensus expectations of 8% growth. The leadership shakeup also includes the appointment of David Dorman as independent chairman of the board, while Chief Financial and Operating Officer Jamie Miller will serve as interim CEO until Lores takes the helm next month. The abruptness of the transition left HP scrambling for a successor, as Lores’s departure from the computing giant was reportedly unexpected.
The primary catalyst for this leadership overhaul is the continued erosion of PayPal’s "branded checkout" dominance. For years, the PayPal button was the gold standard of online commerce, but it has increasingly become a "share donor" to more integrated digital wallets. According to Goldman Sachs analyst Will Nance, PayPal is losing ground to Apple Pay, Google Pay, and platform-specific solutions from Shopify and Amazon. The competitive pressure is particularly acute among younger consumers who favor the frictionless, biometric-authenticated experience of mobile-native wallets over PayPal’s legacy interface. Analysts at Truist Securities noted that PayPal’s branded offering is currently perceived as having a worse user interface and higher pricing relative to its peers, creating a double-edged sword of declining utility and compressed margins.
The selection of Lores signals a strategic pivot from product-led innovation toward operational discipline. During his 35-year tenure at HP, Lores was credited with navigating complex hardware cycles and shifting the company toward higher-margin services. PayPal’s board appears to be betting that Lores can apply a similar "operational playbook" to stabilize the company’s sprawling infrastructure, which has been weighed down by years of disparate acquisitions. However, the move is not without risk; Lores lacks deep domain expertise in the highly regulated and rapidly evolving payments sector, where the rise of "agentic commerce" and AI-driven transactions—led by rivals like Stripe and OpenAI—threatens to disintermediate traditional processors entirely.
Looking forward, Lores inherits a company at a strategic crossroads. Wall Street is increasingly calling for radical structural changes, including the potential spinoff of Venmo to unlock value or a more aggressive divestiture of non-core assets like Braintree’s unbranded processing, which has pressured overall transaction margins. The market’s harsh reaction to the appointment—an 18% sell-off—suggests that investors view the CEO change not as a panacea, but as a confirmation of the depth of PayPal’s structural malaise. To restore confidence, Lores must quickly articulate a plan that moves beyond cost-cutting to address the fundamental question of PayPal’s relevance in a world where payment functionality is becoming an invisible, embedded feature of every digital platform.
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