PayPal (PYPL) stock is down on Thursday following its latest stock market downgrade from analysts at Morgan Stanley. The firm downgraded its rating recommendation on PYPL shares to Underweight from Equal-Weight, the payment platform’s third such downgrade this month.
According to MS analyst James Faucette, there is concern that improvements to PayPal’s branded checkout integrations have been slow. The analyst notes that these upgrades to PayPal “are proving to be more complex and time-consuming than expected, and still aren’t moving the needle on usage as we hoped they would,” he added in a note to investors. PYPL took a 1% hit on Thursday following the forecast revision, and is down 2% since Sunday.
In all, “we see increased risk of downward adjustment. EPS revisions on slower growth and as we expect PayPal will need to continue investing to address the above challenges and spend on marketing to slow share loss,” the note added.
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Earlier in the week, PayPal (PYPL) stock did climb following the company’s announcement that it had applied to become a certified US bank. The platform submitted the required documents to the Utah Department of Financial Institutions and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on Monday to establish PayPal Bank. If approved, the proposed PayPal bank would focus on providing business lending solutions to small businesses in the United States.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, other firms are also bearish on PYPL stock. Bank of America Securities also cut PYPL over a delay in reinvigorating branded checkout growth. J.P. Morgan, too, downgraded PYPL early this month.