PayPal stock rises as BMO turns more bullish
Shares of PayPal Holdings Inc. rose 1.7% in Wednesday morning trading after BMO Capital Markets analyst Paulo Ribeiro raised his target price on the stock to $85, from $80. He's upbeat about PayPal's November decision to sell its loan portfolio to Synchrony Financial and thinks that the move will be less dilutive to PayPal's earnings per share than Wall Street predicts. He believes that consensus figures underestimate operating expenditures for the credit business and therefore overestimate how much this area contributes to PayPal's earnings. Ribeiro also wrote that PayPal was likely being conservative when it projected that the deal would free up more than $1 billion in additional cash. BMO estimates an additional $2.5 billion in cash freed for 2019. PayPal shares have gained 89% so far in 2017, compared with a 19% gain for the S&P 500 Index
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