E-commerce firm PayPal should hire Pinterest Chief Executive Bill Ready as its next CEO as PYPL stock struggles to recover from a rough 2022, said a Bank of America analyst on Friday.
On the digital payment processor's December-quarter earnings call, the company said current CEO Dan Schulman will retire at the end of 2023. Schulman will continue to serve on the PayPal board of directors after he exits as CEO.
In a report published Friday, PayPal stock analyst Jason Kupferberg at BofA said, "In our view, the No. 1 criteria for PYPL's next CEO is a track record of tech product development and deployment. With a more narrowed growth focus post-pandemic, PYPL should be in a better position to accelerate time to market for key products in each of these areas. In our opinion, Bill Ready (current CEO at Pinterest) could be a potential ideal candidate."
Ready served as chief operating officer of PayPal from 2013 to 2019. He took that role after PayPal acquired Braintree in 2013, where he was CEO.
Just prior to becoming Pinterest's CEO in 2022, Ready was a senior executive at Google-parent Alphabet.
PayPal stock analyst David Holt at CFRA Research said last year in a report that activist investor Elliott Management may push for a PayPal merger with social media firm Pinterest. The company called off merger talks with Pinterest in 2021.
PayPal Stock: Schulman Pay Cut
Earnings for PayPal stock are due May 8.
San Jose, Calif.-based PayPal in early 2022 abandoned five-year financial targets. Also, PayPal stock plunged 62% last year.
Amid the poor performance of PYPL stock in 2022, the company has slashed outgoing CEO Schulman's pay for failing to meet financial targets. Bloomberg reported Thursday that PayPal cut Schulman's 2022 pay by 32%. Schulman was awarded $22 million in compensation for 2022, including about $20.2 million in stock awards, Bloomberg said.
Further, PYPL stock advanced 1% to 76.28 on the stock market today.
Also, PayPal stock has retreated from an all-time high of 310.16 on July 26, 2021. Meanwhile, shares hold a Relative Strength Rating of only 30 out of a best-possible 99, according to IBD Stock Checkup.
Follow Reinhardt Krause on Twitter @reinhardtk_tech for updates on 5G wireless, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and cloud computing.
