Dan Schulman, CEO of Paypal, attends the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, July 10, 2019.
Gerard Miller | CNBC
PayPal said on Thursday that CEO and president Dan Schulman will retire and leave the company at the end 2023.
Schulman, who became PayPal CEO after the split from eBay in 2015, notified the company of his decision to retire at the end of December. He will remain a member of PayPal’s board of directors, which is hiring a search firm to find a successor.
“I’m proud of what we have accomplished at PayPal and of the incredibly talented and committed people I work with every day,” Schulman said in a statement. “Together, we have reimagined financial services and e-commerce, and worked to improve the financial health of our customers.”
Last summer, activist investor Elliott Management accumulated an undisclosed stake in PayPal.
In an interview with CNBC’s Kate Rooney on Thursday, Schulman said that he didn’t experience any pressure from Elliott Management.
“We actually really haven’t spoken much this past quarter,” Schulman said.
“Jesse and I are our good friends,” he said referring to Elliott Management managing partner Jesse Cohn. “He’s been incredibly supportive and I’m sure this announcement comes as a real surprise and shock because he’s been so supportive.”
Schulman added that PayPal’s “board just wants to find the very best candidate” and that they are “going to look across the company and externally we just want to make sure we get the best possible candidate coming in.”
He said that he felt it was the right time to announce his departure because PayPal “was in a good place” and “was in a position to to deliver a strong year” and that board would have enough time to find a successor.
“And the timing was right,” Schulman said. “It makes sense.”
The company announced Schulman’s upcoming departure on the same day it reported its 2022 fourth quarter earnings.
PayPal said that its net revenue grew 7% year-over-year to $7.4 billion in the fourth quarter.
In late January, PayPal said it would lay off 2,000 employees, which equates to 7% of the company’s workforce. Schulman said in a statement at the time that PayPal was addressing the “challenging macroeconomic environment.”
PayPal shares jumped by about 130% since the 2015 spinoff. But the company has lost roughly three-quarters of its value since the stock’s peak in July 2021.
The company’s shares rose over 4% in after-hours trading on Thursday to $81.70.
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