PayPal enters the final stretch before its July 28 earnings with a stock that has recovered 14% over the past month but is losing momentum — and a Street that still leans skeptical even as one notable bear softened its stance.
The most significant development since last week's note is Goldman Sachs raising its price target on July 9 from $41 to $48 — while keeping a Sell rating. That's a telling move: Goldman is acknowledging the rally has legs but hasn't changed its fundamental view. The stock at $47.37 now sits essentially at Goldman's revised target, which frames the ceiling the bears are drawing. Macquarie reiterated Neutral at $50 on July 15. Barclays' Underweight initiation at $42 from July 8 remains in place, as does Truist's Sell at $44 and Piper Sandler's Neutral at $42. RBC Capital's Outperform at $59 stays the lone constructive outlier. The direction of analyst activity is telling: the most active voices this week raised targets only to cluster them right around or below the current price. That's not a bullish read — it's the Street flagging that fair value may already be in the tape.
The lending market tells a comfortable story for anyone still short. Borrow availability is exceptionally loose at 1,346% — meaning the pool of shares available to lend dwarfs the current short position by more than 13 to one. Cost to borrow has edged up about 12% on the week to 0.46%, but that remains firmly in the low-cost range with no sign of squeeze pressure. Short interest itself has climbed 15% over the past month to 5.8% of free float — a meaningful and growing short book — yet the combination of loose availability and cheap borrow suggests shorts are not under any pressure to cover. Options positioning is calm and nearly neutral, with the put/call ratio at 0.42, barely above its 20-day average and well below the 52-week high of 0.63. There is no particular hedging urgency being priced in the options market ahead of the July 28 print.
History offers a note of caution. The last earnings release on May 5 sent the stock down 8.2% the next day and a further 9.8% over the following week — a painful reaction that preceded the recovery now under way. That pattern matters: bulls need the July 28 print to break the streak, while the cluster of analyst targets below or near current levels gives the bears a credible narrative if results disappoint again. The bear case centres on a maturing checkout business, European softness, and regulatory risk. The bull case leans on Venmo, AI-driven efficiency gains, and a valuation the ORTEX stock score flags as genuinely cheap — a PE around 7.7x and EV/EBITDA near 5.9x sit at levels that imply the turnaround story is not yet priced in.
Among close peers, the week's divergence is notable. FIS fell 4.7% and FISV dropped 6% — a significantly rougher week than PayPal's 3.8% gain. TOST added 1.3%, roughly in line. PayPal has been the relative outperformer in this payments cohort, which may partly explain why the rally is beginning to pause: the stock has closed the discount gap that existed after its May selloff, and now trades at a level where even upgraded bear targets offer little further comfort.
What to watch next is straightforward: the July 28 earnings release and whether PayPal's Q2 payment volumes and guidance speak to the checkout headwinds the bears have anchored their targets around.
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