PYPL stock jumped nearly 15% in the overnight session late Tuesday after reported that Stripe and Advent International offered to jointly buy PayPal Holdings Inc. for $60.50 per share. The reported bid valued PayPal at more than $53 billion and came with about $50 billion in committed financing from banks.
Stripe and Advent International
said Stripe and Advent International would each take an equal stake if the deal went through. The offer represented a premium of about 28% over PayPal's last closing price, a spread that put a concrete price on a company markets had already been speculating about since the beginning of the year.
That speculation grew after PayPal reorganized to separate Venmo from its other operations. For holders of PayPal shares, the immediate takeaway was the valuation gap the bid opened: the market price moved sharply, while the proposal itself still sat at the level of an offer rather than a completed transaction.
PayPal Holdings Inc.
said Stripe and Advent submitted the offer earlier this month after making an initial offer in early April. PayPal had yet to respond at the time of the report, while Stripe and Advent were looking to close an agreement by the end of the month.
The reported valuation also ran into resistance in trading chatter. One bullish Stocktwits user wrote, "There's a giant gap between $82-86. That's a nice offer for a buyout, not just $60… I'll wait and see how it plays out," while another called the bid "dumb" and a third posted "zero percent chance of a sale to Stripe for $53B." Another user wrote, "Regardless if they get bought or not, another accumulation week is upon the stock."
The central question for investors is whether the reported offer turns into a real deal. said the people cited in its report saw no guarantee that the proposal would result in a transaction, and PYPL stock had still lost more than 18% of its value year-to-date before the overnight jump.
For now, the market has a price and a timetable: $60.50 a share, nearly 15% higher in overnight trading, with a possible agreement targeted by the end of the month. What happens next depends on whether PayPal answers the bid or lets the offer sit where it is.
