PayPal, the payments company, posted first-quarter earnings results after the bell on Wednesday. After surpassing analyst estimates with an adjusted 44 cents per share, compared to the 41 cents that many were predicting, shares rose 7 percent in initial after-hours trading. Net income was $384 million, up 5 percent from last year.
Revenue was also slightly better than expected, coming in at $2.975 billion, when compared to the $2.94 billion that analysts surveyed by FactSet were expecting. That’s growth of 17 percent year-over-year.
PayPal also announced a $5 billion share repurchase program.
“With another quarter of strong financial results, we continue to deliver on our vision to democratize financial services for our consumers and drive the global transition from cash to digital payments,” said Dan Schulman, president and CEO of PayPal, in a statement.
Some investors had been wondering what effect the recent credit card partnerships will have on margins. As more of their customers shift to credit cards, it will reduce margins. But the credit card accessibility can also add new customers.
PayPal says they added 6 million new accounts in the quarter, bringing the total to 203 million active users.
The company owns Braintree, which processes the mobile payments for Uber, Airbnb, Facebook Messenger and other big clients. This means that PayPal takes a cut of these transactions.
PayPal also owns Venmo, the popular peer-to-peer payments platform. They have increasingly been monetizing this product through business partnerships and the division brought in $6.8 billion in total payments volume, up more than double from the same period last year.
Total payments volume for the company was $99 billion, in line with analyst expectations. This is up 23 percent from last year or 25 percent, adjusting for changes in currency.
PayPal separated from eBay in July 2015, and is the larger of the two companies with a market cap of almost $54 billion. Shares are up almost 13 percent this year, and closed Wednesday at $44.41.
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