PayPal focus on marketing/promotions ‘a net negative,’ says Morgan Stanley

After PayPal’s new CEO, Alex Chriss, hosted a “First Look” keynote yesterday to provide insights into new product innovations and AI enhancements at PayPal and Venmo, Morgan Stanley analyst James Faucette believes investors who were hoping for significant product announcements or integration updates were “likely disappointed” as most of the new product updates had already been introduced by PayPal previously at their June 2023 Investor Update. Most of Chriss’ commentary focused on leveraging AI and PayPal’s consumer data breadth to optimize promotional activity on PayPal’s apps, says the analyst, who generally isn’t positive on demand generation initiatives given the view that merchants are adversely sensitive to payment providers and partners that use transaction data to drive promotions. The firm keeps an Equal Weight rating and $66 price target on PayPal shares.