PayPal CEO Dan Schulman to Retire at Year-End as Growth Slows

Jenny Surane, Bloomberg News

Dan Schulman, president and chief executive officer of PayPal Holdings Inc., speaks during the CoinDesk 2022 Consensus Festival in Austin, Texas, US, on Friday, June 10, 2022. The festival showcases all sides of the blockchain, crypto, NFT, and Web 3 ecosystems, and their wide-reaching effect on commerce, culture, and communities. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- PayPal Holdings Inc. said longtime Chief Executive Officer Dan Schulman will retire at year-end as the payments giant contends with slowing growth across its platforms.

Schulman will continue to work with the board, which is enlisting a search firm to find a successor, the company said in a statement.

“I’m so proud of all the things we accomplished, but as I’m getting older, I also want to spend more time on the things I’m passionate about outside of work — that could be from politics to nonprofits to traveling more to academia,” Schulman said in an interview. “There’s so much that I want to do.”

PayPal has spent much of the last year contending with a slowdown in growth in spending on its platforms, as supply-chain shocks crimped e-commerce and inflation forced consumers to rein in shopping. In response, Schulman has vowed to improve operating leverage — boosting revenue faster than expenses.

As part of that effort, the company unveiled plans last week to dismiss 2,000 employees, or about 7% of its workforce. The restructuring will result in about $100 million in charges in the current quarter, the firm said Thursday.

Even still, the company expects the cost-cutting to help boost adjusted profits for the year 18% to $4.87 a share, exceeding the $4.75 analysts have been projecting.

“I wanted to make sure PayPal was in good shape before I left,” Schulman said. Last year was tough, he said, but “we’re in a good position to deliver a strong 2023.”

The shares slipped 2.3% at 5:24 pm in extended New York trading after the announcements. They had ended regular trading at $78.42 Thursday and were up 10% this year.

Schulman joined PayPal in 2014 and helped lead it through an initial public offering the next year. Under his watch, revenues have almost tripled and total payment volumes across the company’s many platforms have quintupled.

The payments platform was an investor favorite early in the pandemic, with consumers stuck at home and shopping online. PayPal quickly expanded into areas including cryptocurrencies, buy-now-pay-later services and savings accounts.

As the pandemic eased, growth slowed. The company also has contended with its former parent company, eBay Inc., moving payments away from PayPal. Investors ended up lopping more than $140 billion off its market capitalization last year.

(Updated with comments from interview, description of earnings from third paragraph.)