PayPal's Quarterly Revenue Beats Estimates

PayPal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:PYPL) reported a better-than-expected 18.1 percent rise in quarterly revenue, helped by a surge in payment processing volumes and customer additions.

PayPal, spun off from e-commerce company eBay Inc last year, said its revenue rose to $2.67 billion in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, from $2.26 billion a year earlier.

Net income rose to $323 million, or 27 cents per share, from $301 million, or 25 cents per share.

Excluding items, the company earned 35 cents per share.

Analysts on average had expected a profit of 35 cents per share and revenue of $2.65 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The payments processor, which signed network deals with Mastercard Inc and Visa Inc this year, has focused on growing transaction volumes and expanding its share of the digital payments market.

Active customer accounts rose 11 percent to 192 million in the third quarter, beating the average analyst estimate of 191.6 million, according to research firm FactSet StreetAccount.

Total payment volumes surged 25 percent to $87 billion.

However, PayPal's transaction margins, which have been steadily declining for the last five quarters, fell to 58.7 percent from 59.8 percent in the second quarter.

PayPal processed 1.5 billion transactions in the latest quarter, slightly lower than the average estimate of 1.52 billion.

Up to Thursday's close, shares of the company had risen 10.7 percent this year, outperforming the 4.8 percent gain in the broader S&P 500. (Reporting by Narottam Medhora and Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)