PayPal Holdings Inc. pleased investors when it announced a new $15 billion buyback authorization alongside a suite of other shareholder-friendly moves earlier this week. Now investors will have to hope that the company executes better with its new buyback plan than it has in the past. While the e-commerce giant has been repurchasing stock for years, its buyback history has been “very poor,” according to VerityData research director Ben Silverman, who tracks buyback patterns and insider-selling data. The company has repurchased $8.7 billion in stock since 2019 at an average price of $143.21. That compares to PayPal’s
PYPL,
-0.39%
Wednesday close of $97.92.
Additionally, the company has only decreased its number of shares outstanding by about 1.4% in the past three and a half years, he noted. Those buybacks “clearly didn’t prop the stock up for a very long time, if they played any role in that, and they weren’t a good return on investment,” Silverman told MarketWatch. PayPal had about $2.8 billion remaining on its prior buyback authorization as of June 30, but the company’s decision to add $15 billion more to the program signals it still considers repurchases a priority. Though PayPal executives said that their various shareholder initiatives were underway before activists at Elliott Management invested in the company, Elliott has been known in the past to urge other companies to repurchase shares. One factor that could potentially work in PayPal’s favor when it embarks on its next chapter of share repurchases is that it will have a new chief financial officer at the helm, after former Electronic Arts Inc.
EA,
-0.25%
CFO Blake Jorgensen took over the position Wednesday. While …