PayPal was first founded in 1998; it was called Confinity (among its founders was Peter Thiel); later, it merged with X.com, its major competitor, founded by Elon Musk (which would become known for other companies like Tesla and SpaceX). From this merger, PayPal was born. In 2002, PayPal was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion. eBay spun off PayPal in 2015, which would be listed as an independent entity. Today PayPal owns brands like Braintree, Venmo, Xoom, and iZettle.
Top institutional investors comprise mutual funds, like The Vanguard Group, owning 8.01% of PayPal. And BlackRock, owning 6.5$ of PayPal. PayPal’s top individual shareholders, in 2022 comprise people like Daniel Schulman, John Rainey, Mark Britto, Lousie Pentald, and Jonathan Auerbach.
The spin-off from eBay
The official spin-off of PayPal from eBay, as announced on eBay’s website (Source: eBay News).
In the distribution, eBay Inc. stockholders will receive one share of PayPal common stock for each share of eBay Inc. common stock held as of the close of business on July 8, 2015, the record date for the distribution. Subject to the satisfaction of the conditions to the distribution, the distribution of PayPal common stock is expected to occur on July 17, 2015. PayPal will not issue fractional shares of its common stock in the distribution. Immediately following the distribution, PayPal will be an independent, publicly traded company and will be listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market under the ticker “PYPL.” eBay will continue to trade on the NASDAQ Stock Market under the ticker “EBAY.”
eBay’s core business is a platform business model that makes money from transaction fees through its marketplaces (eBay and StubHub). eBay also makes money through advertising on its classifieds marketplace and other services. The company primarily makes money by charging fees on successfully closed transactions.PayPal makes money primarily by processing customer transactions on the Payments Platform and other value-added services. Thus, the revenue streams are divided into transaction revenues based on the volume of activity or total payments volume. And value-added services, such as interest and fees earned on loans and interest receivable. As of 2021, PayPal processed $1.25 trillion in total transactions, with net revenues of $25.4 billion and $4.3B in operating income.
Interestingly, over time, PayPal was born as a side feature within eBay, and after it, that was purchased by eBay, PayPal became more valuable than eBay.
In September 2022, PayPal had a market cap of over $100 billion, whereas eBay had a market cap of over $20 billion.
This is the PayPal’s board of directors in 2022:
Below, is the compensation mix as per PayPal’s financials:
Venmo is a peer-to-peer payments app enabling users to share and make payments with friends for various services. The service is free, but a 3% fee applies to credit cards. Venmo got acquired in 2012 by Braintree, and Braintree got acquired in 2013 by PayPal.Venmo got acquired in 2012 by Braintree. Braintree was acquired in 2013 by PayPal. Thus, Venmo is part of the PayPal ecosystem. Venmo is a peer-to-peer payments app that allows users to share and make payments with friends for various services. When you send money using your Venmo balance, the fees are waived. Thus the service is free. However, the 3% fee applies to credit cards. That is how the company generates revenues.
PayPal was born as the merger of two early Internet startups, Confinity (founded by Max Levchin and Peter Thiel) and X.com (founded by Elon Musk). Both companies stumbled on a commercial killer feature (enabling Internet payments via email) and ended up being extremely useful on a nascent auction platform: eBay. From the merger of these companies, PayPal was born. And it wrote the Internet business playbook for startups.
The most prominent institutional shareholders are mutual funds BlackRock and The Vanguard Group, with 2.7% and 3.1%, respectively. Larry Page and Sergey Brin together have 51% of the voting power. Other individual shareholders comprise John Doerr (1.5%), venture capitalist and early investor in Google, and CEO, Sundar Pichai. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has 4.2% voting power.
Mark Zuckerberg is the largest shareholder of the company. Zuckerberg retains ownership and control of the company. Like Google, Facebook has issued two common stocks, Class A and Class B. The holders of Class B common stocks are entitled to ten votes per share, and holders of our Class A common stocks are entitled to one vote per share. Mark Zuckerberg has a voting power of 56.9%; he’s the main decision-maker.
As of 2021, major Apple shareholders comprised Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway with 5.56% of the company’s stock. Followed by other individual shareholders like Tim Cook, CEO of Apple with over 3.3 million shares, Artur Levinson, chairman of Apple, with over 4.5 million shares, and others.
With 64,588,418 shares, Jeff Bezos is the major individual investor. Owning 12.7% of the company. Other top individual investors comprise Amazon’s CEO Andy Jessy, with 94,729 shares. Top institutional investors comprise mutual funds like The Vanguard Group (6.6% ownership) and BlackRock (5.7% ownership).
Major shareholders comprise co-founder Bill Gates, who stepped down from the company’s board in 2020, which is why these shares are no longer publicly reported. In 2019, Gates still owned a stake of 103 million stocks, which accounted for 1.34% of the company’s ownership (worth over $23 billion in September 2022). Other individual shareholders comprise Satya Nadella, the company’s CEO, Brad Smith (former president), Jean-Philippe Courtois (EVP), and Amy Hood (former CFO).
By 2022, most of Tesla’s shares are still owned by Elon Musk, among the company’s co-founders and the CEO. Elon Musk is the top individual investor, with a 23.5% stake in the company, equivalent to over 244 million shares. Musk is followed by Lawrence Ellison (founder of Oracle), with a 1.5% company stake. Ellison also sits on Tesla’s board. And Antonio Gracias, among the company’s first investors, has over 1.6 million shares. Other institutional investors and mutual funds like The Vanguard Group (6%), Blackrock (5.1%), and Capital Ventures International also have a good chunk of the company’s stocks.
PayPal was first founded in 1998; it was called Confinity (among its founders was Peter Thiel); later, it merged with X.com, its major competitor, founded by Elon Musk (which would become known for other companies like Tesla and SpaceX). From this merger, PayPal was born. In 2002, PayPal was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion. eBay spun off PayPal in 2015, which would be listed as an independent entity. Today PayPal owns brands like Braintree, Venmo, Xoom, and iZettle.
Netflix’s largest individual shareholder is Reed Hastings, co-founder, and CEO of the company, with a 1.7% stake, valued at over $1.8 billion in 2022. Netflix runs a subscription-based business model that generated $29.6 billion in revenues, and it had over 221 million global members in 2021. Netflix’s business model runs only premium content on its platform, driven by its Netflix Originals shows. Netflix is also building an ad-supported version.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese internet technology company owning several content platforms worldwide (Douyin, Toutiao, Xigua Video, Helo, Lark, Babe). Bytedance passed the $300 billion private market valuation by 2022, making around $58 billion in revenue in 2022, over $4 billion from TikTok.
OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory that transitioned into a for-profit organization in 2019, which comprised an entity called OpenAI LP and the non-profit parent foundation OpenAI. The lab, which was founded in 2015 by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and various others, has a core focus on the development of friendly AI that benefits society as a whole. Yet now has primarily evolved as a capped-for-profit entity with an exclusive commercial license to Microsoft.
Balenciaga is a Spanish luxury fashion house that was founded in 1917 by designer Cristóbal Balenciaga. The company was initially located in the Basque region of Spain before the civil war in that country forced Balenciaga to move his operations to Paris in 1937. Kering acquired a 91% stake in Balenciaga in 2001 for an undisclosed sum. The French multinational then purchased the rights to the perfume brand which likely made them the sole owner.
Gucci is owned by the french holding Kering, which completed its buyout of Gucci in an $8.8 billion deal in 2004. Today Gucci is the group’s largest brand, generating over $9.7 billion in 2021 on a $17.64 billion group revenue. Thus representing over 55% of Kering’s Group revenues in 2021.
Louis Vuitton is owned by LVMH, among the largest luxury goods companies in the world. With over $53 billion in revenues by 2019. It owns 75 brands in six different sectors. Some of these brands comprise Louis Vuitton, Bulgari, Christian Dior, Fendi, Loro Piana, Celine, Givenchy, Kenzo, Berluti, and Rimowa. LVMH is owned by the Arnault family (Bernard Arnault, the CEO, is among the wealthiest men on earth) with a 47.44% ownership stake and over 63.5% of the voting power. Thus asserting a tight control over the Luxury Empire.
Adidas is a German multinational best known as a designer and manufacturer of sportswear and related accessories. It was founded in 1924 in the Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach, Germany, and did not take on the Adidas name until 1949. The new company, known today as Adidas AG, is the holding company for the Adidas Group and the sole owner of Adidas. Some of the company’s largest shareholders include: Groupe Bruxelles Lambert SA (7.6%), Nassef Sawiris (3.3%), and Norges Bank Investment Management (2.8%).
Burger King is an American multinational chain of fast-food restaurants that is headquartered in Miami, Florida. The first Burger King restaurant, then known as Insta-Burger King, was opened in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1953 by Keith Cramer and his stepfather Matthew Burns. Burger King Worldwide merged with the Canadian coffee chain Tim Hortons in 2014. This precipitated the formation of parent company Restaurant Brands International, which is part-owned by former Burger King owner 3G Capital.
Marvel, formerly known as Marvel Entertainment LLC, is an American entertainment company based in New York City that is best known for its comic books and film, TV, and video game franchises. The Marvel we know today is the result of a merger between toy subsidiary Toy Biz (now Marvel Toys) and Marvel Entertainment Group.
Yeezy was a fashion brand that arose from a collaboration between German sportswear company Adidas and entrepreneur and music artist Kanye West. While Yeezy inspired a multitude of other brands in the fashion industry and earned revenue in the billions, the collaboration between West and Adidas ended abruptly in October 2022.
Ferrari’s top individual shareholders include Exor (the Holding company of the Agnelli Family, also the owner of FIAT Chrysler) with 24% of its shares, Piero Ferrari (son of Enzo Ferrari, the founder of the company), and other institutional investors like BlackRock and T. Rowe Price Associates. Ferrari runs a car luxury business model famous for its iconic models, which in 2019 made over €3.7 billion in revenues ($4.3 billion) in sales.
The major shareholder for Volkswagen is Porsche Automobil Holding SE, a company investing in various automakers. This is the holding of the Porsche family, who is the primary shareholder of Volkswagen, with a 31.3% ownership stake in the company and a 53.1% voting power. Volkswagen is an automaker empire with brands that comprise Audi, Skoda, Seat, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Porsche, Bentley, and Ducati.
Lamborghini is an Italian luxury sports car manufacturer that was founded in 1963 by manufacturing magnate Ferruccio Lamborghini. Since that time, ownership of the firm has changed several times. Another financial crisis in the late 1990s saw Lamborghini sold to Volkswagen through its subsidiary Audi AG. The subsidiary remains the owner of Lamborghini today.
The iconic brand Bugatti, founded by Ettore Bugatti in 1909, is now owned by the German’s Volkswagen, one of the world’s largest automakers. Other brands in the Volkswagen family comprise Audi, Skoda, Seat, Lamborghini, Porsche, Bentley, and Ducati. As a high-performance car maker, Bugatti only sells a limited number of cars each year. Indeed, in 2019, Volkswagen sold 82 Bugatti, compared to 76 Bugatti in 2018.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
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