PayPal reported fourth quarter results of a revenue of $2.6 billion for a growth of 17 percent and full-year 2015 results of a revenue of $9.2 billion for a growth of 15 percent.
After reporting its earnings, which exceeded the company's full-year guidance despite foreign exchange headwinds and a slowing global economy, stocks for the company increased by 6 percent in after-hours trading.
"We exited 2015 with great momentum," said PayPal President and CEO Dan Schulman, adding that the strong results of the company shows the progress of PayPal in its delivery of a strategy to push forward the digital payments revolution.
While PayPal is often seen as yesterday's digital payment platform, it is less known that PayPal also owns Braintree, which is the mobile payments system behind a variety of apps such as Airbnb and Uber.
It can be remembered that PayPal was only officially spun off from eBay in July 2015, and its stocks have fallen by 22 percent since its peak last summer. PayPal, however, is the bigger of the two companies, with a market cap of $39 billion compared to the $32 billion of eBay.
While PayPal seems to be trending up with strong growth, eBay's luck is moving toward the opposite end.
The efforts of eBay for a turnaround after the spinoff of PayPal is taking longer than anticipated, which has made investors lose patience in the company.
The fourth quarter revenue of eBay was $2.32 billion, which is flat compared to the previous year's quarter and just slightly higher than analyst expectations of $2.31 billion. The shares of eBay, however, dropped by 12 percent in after-hours trading, as the slightly lower outlook of the company for the first quarter and the full year of 2016 caused disappointment among investors.
While executives for eBay pointed to fluctuations in currency due to the stronger U.S. dollar as the culprit, the separation of PayPal played a role. The operating costs of eBay were negatively impacted by the PayPal spinoff, as executives noted that the company's cost of revenue increased from $442 million in the previous year's quarter to $493 million due to PayPal processing costs.
PayPal and eBay are now heading in different directions after their separation, and only time will tell how far apart their fortunes will head.
