PayPal, AmEx Outperform On Q3 Earnings

We’ve seen a big day of earnings reports now that Q3 earnings season has gotten hot and heavy: both PayPal (PYPL – Free Report) and American Express (AXP – Free Report) have reported Q3 results after the closing bell today, and both look to have performed well, even as the stock market continues to trade without lots of confidence going forward, overall.

Internet payment early entrant PayPal outperformed estimates, by 4 cents per share on the bottom line to 58 cents per share, up 14% year over year. Revenues came in at $3.68 billion for the quarter, an improvement from the $3.66 billion expected. Consider this a modest but solid beat for the company.

Total Payment Volume (TPV) rose 25% year over year to $143 billion, led by Venmo monetization up 80% to $17 billion in the quarter. Venmo is PayPal’s mobile payment service, demonstrating yet again where the future is for payment companies overall. Venmo has performed better than analysts had expected; the conference call should help answer questions about Venmo’s strong inflows.

Guidance is up for PayPal for full-year 2018 earnings, so look for analysts to ratchet up expectations in the coming days, perhaps even to bring the company out of its current Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) status. The company has never missed an earnings quarter in its publicly traded existence. Shares are up 3% in after-market trading. For more on PYPL earnings, click here.

Credit card giant American Express has also outperformed estimates on both top and bottom lines, with $1.88 per share zooming past the $1.77 expected on $10.14 billion on revenues, well past the $10.05 billion analysts had been looking for. Guidance for full-year 2018 is up 9-10%, with adjusted EPS up to $7.30-7.40. This is even with provisional losses increasing 16% year over year. Shares are up slightly in late trading. For more on AXP’s earnings, click here.