PayPal is replacing its CEO Alex Chriss with HP’s top executive Enrique Lores. The board cited insufficient pace of change over the past two years, but gave little more explanation. Lores will take the helm on March 1, 2025. Bruce Broussard is stepping in as interim CEO for HP.
PayPal announced Tuesday that it’s bringing in new leadership following what the board described as underwhelming progress. Chriss, who joined from Intuit in 2023, led initiatives to monetize Venmo and expand Buy Now Pay Later services. However, the board’s evaluation found execution fell short of expectations.
Former HP chief steps in
Lores may be best known for his HP role, but he has served on PayPal’s board for nearly five years and became chair last July. He spent over six years leading HP before stepping down this week to take on his new role. The timing coincides with PayPal’s fourth-quarter earnings release, which showed net income jumping 28 percent to $1.44 billion. Yet revenue growth of just 4% to $8.68 billion missed analyst forecasts.
For the full year, PayPal reported revenues of 31.8 billion dollars, up 7 percent, with total payment volume reaching 1.68 trillion dollars. Active accounts grew by 8.8 million to 434 million. Transaction revenue and payment volumes, however, came in below expectations, according to TD Cowen analyst Bryan Bergin.
AI reshaping digital payments
“The payments industry is changing faster than ever, driven by new technologies, evolving regulations, an increasingly competitive landscape, and the rapid acceleration of AI that is reshaping commerce daily,” Lores said in a statement. He emphasized PayPal’s central position in this shift and promised to accelerate innovation. That may well be necessary as payment providers are plentiful, and companies such as Apple and Google are seeking to monetize a greater portion of their respective platforms through processing payments over PayPal and others.
Chief Financial and Operating Officer Jamie Miller will serve as interim CEO at PayPal until Lores officially starts. During Tuesday’s earnings webcast, Miller acknowledged execution issues without mincing words. “We recognize as a company that our execution has not been what it needs to be,” she told analysts. “We have not moved fast enough, or with the level of focus required.”
Miller stressed that the CEO change stems from execution challenges rather than strategic direction. She noted Lores’ 18 months as board chair and his HP leadership experience position him well to maintain the current strategy while improving delivery speed. “Faster decision-making, clear prioritization, more disciplined execution,” especially for branded checkout services, “is going to be very, very helpful,” Miller said.
What will HP do?
Whoever succeeds Lores at HP, they will face a doubtlessly tumultuous year. With PC sales recovering after the post-Covid slump somewhat, a vast rise in memory pricing is set to shake up supply and demand greatly. Although DRAM memory chips and NAND flash storage cover a small portion of the overall BOM costs for vendors like HP, Dell and Lenovo, their surging prices are accompanied by severe shortages. Navigating that storm will be tricky, just like trying to explain to end users why they’re likely getting inferior or equivalent specs compared to previous years for a higher price.
Also read: Memory pricing expected to double this quarter beyond record high