PayPal announced on Tuesday that its Chairman, Enrique Lores, will officially take over as the Chief Executive Officer of the payment services company starting March 1. Lores has served as CEO of computer and printer giant HP Inc for six years. PayPal disclosed the leadership change alongside its fourth-quarter earnings report, stating that Lores will succeed Alex Chriss as the company's CEO. In a phone interview with Yahoo Finance, Lores stated: "I believe PayPal has a vast future. We need to enhance execution efficiency and drive greater progress on existing strategic initiatives, which will be my core focus for the coming year." Discussing his immediate priorities upon taking office, Lores said: "I will focus on consolidating and extending PayPal's momentum in areas like Venmo payments and buy-now-pay-later services. However, simultaneously, we must improve the performance of our branded checkout business and increase market share – this is the company's core operation, and our current progress has not met expectations." Following the release of the earnings report and the CEO transition news, PayPal's stock plummeted more than 18% in early trading. HP Inc's stock fell 6.2%. This new role represents a significant transition for Lores – he first joined HP Inc as an engineering intern back in 1989 and is undoubtedly a seasoned corporate leader. On November 1, 2019, Lores officially became CEO of HP Inc. Several years prior to that, he had spearheaded the separation of HP Inc and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Shortly after taking the helm, he was forced to confront and successfully fend off a $35 billion hostile takeover bid from competitor Xerox. After resolving the acquisition threat, Lores drove a comprehensive business overhaul and implemented cost-cutting measures at HP Inc during the pandemic, and is now leading the company into the era of artificial intelligence computing. Alex Chriss officially took the reins at PayPal on September 27, 2023. He was personally selected by then-PayPal Chairman John Donahoe to succeed his friend and long-time PayPal CEO Dan Schulman (Schulman later became CEO of Verizon). Lores was appointed Chairman of PayPal on July 24, 2024. This was Chriss's first CEO role. Previously, he accumulated extensive management experience during a 19-year tenure at tax software giant Intuit, where he oversaw the highly profitable small and medium-sized business division and played a central role in Intuit's $12 billion acquisition of Mailchimp in 2021 – the largest acquisition in Intuit's history to date. Upon taking office, Chriss quickly overhauled PayPal's entire leadership team, bringing in external talent like former General Electric CFO Jamie Miller. After assembling the new executive team, he cut numerous non-core projects to focus the team on major strategic initiatives and accelerate their pace. Concurrently, Chriss also spearheaded a series of strategic partnerships for PayPal. Consumers using Amazon's "Buy with Prime" feature can now complete payments through PayPal; PayPal also became a new online credit and debit card processor for Shopify Payments; US merchants can directly invest in cryptocurrencies via their PayPal Business accounts; PayPal collaborated with comedian Will Ferrell on a series of TV commercials promoting its diverse use cases and changed its long-standing iconic blue logo to black lettering. Recently, PayPal also announced it will support Microsoft's "Copilot for Checkout" feature. But the facts are undeniable: under Chriss's leadership, PayPal's stock performance has been persistently weak. In the realm of corporate management, a CEO's performance is often measured directly by the company's stock trajectory. Since Chriss officially took over, PayPal's stock has declined by 11%, while the S&P 500 index has gained 63% over the same period. Simultaneously, emerging competitors in the payments space have garnered more market attention, with some companies achieving valuations far exceeding that of established giants like PayPal. According to Yahoo Finance data on private companies, Stripe is valued at $110 billion; reports indicate private company Rippling is valued at $75 billion; Affirm's market capitalization has surpassed $20 billion after delivering a series of strong quarterly results. PayPal's current market capitalization is only $50 billion. Lores commented: "I believe the current development of artificial intelligence presents opportunities for cost reduction, efficiency gains, and productivity improvements across all industries. But for PayPal, the current core focus is not simply cost-cutting; it's about concentrating on business growth, increasing strategic investment, and enhancing execution efficiency."