5 Best Investments of Billionaire Peter Thiel

2. PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 143  

PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL) is a payments company that facilitates cross-border transactions at low fees. Thiel was a founding member of the company that represents one of his most successful investments to date. PayPal was sold to ecommerce platform eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion, a mere four years after it was founded. The company is ranked second on our list of 10 best investments of billionaire Peter Thiel. The stock has returned more than 65% to investors in the past twelve months.

PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL) stock has been sliding in recent weeks amid a broader bear market around crypto stocks. The firm recently announced that it would soon allow third party wallet transfers of Bitcoin in a bid to boost crypto transactions on its platform. 

At the end of the first quarter of 2021, 143 hedge funds in the database of Insider Monkey held stakes worth $14.7 billion in PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL), down from 147 in the preceding quarter worth $15.9 billion.

In its Q4 2020 investor letter, Polen Capital Management, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:

“For the full year 2020, one of the top performers was PayPal, which we purchased in 2019, the company continues to take market share in digital payments and has seen an acceleration in user adoption and engagement, especially within their “silver tech” or older user demographic. We expect many more years of ongoing double-digit growth from their various business segments and new initiatives.”