Michael Burry posted on his Substack on June 12 to explain his latest moves, and his most pointed commentary was reserved for PayPal (PYPL). The famous investor, best known for calling the 2008 housing crash, has been adding to his position in the digital payments company as part of a broader rotation into stocks he believes the market has mispriced, according to Seeking Alpha.
The Substack post follows the first quarter 2026 13F filing by Scion Asset Management, which confirmed Burry’s positions in PayPal and several other beaten-down names. Scion now holds nine positions in total.
What the 13F filing did not include is Burry’s reasoning on each stock. The June 12 post did.
What Burry actually said about PayPal
Burry’s Substack comment on PayPal was short and specific, which is how he tends to communicate when his conviction is high.
“Management turnover is hurting the stock as well. Has to look attractive to both PE firms and strategic acquirers,” he wrote, according to Seeking Alpha.
That is not a growth thesis. Burry is not predicting PayPal will outcompete Apple Pay, Block, or Stripe. He is saying the stock has been pushed low enough that private equity firms and strategic acquirers would find it attractive.
More Tech Stocks:
- Morgan Stanley sets jaw-dropping Micron price target after event
- Nvidia’s China chip problem isn’t what most investors think
- Quantum Computing makes $110 million move nobody saw coming
That is a floor argument, and a different framework than what most analysts are currently using to evaluate the stock.
PayPal has been under sustained pressure since its pandemic-era peak. The company went through a CEO change following weaker-than-expected financial results and forward guidance, and the market has been skeptical ever since. That same pressure is precisely what creates the setup Burry tends to favor: a business with durable cash generation and a large payments ecosystem that is being priced as if those assets are worth less than they are.
Why the PE and acquisition framing matters for PayPal specifically
The “attractive to PE firms and strategic acquirers” language is significant because it implies Burry sees a hard floor under the stock that the market may not be pricing correctly. Private equity and strategic buyers evaluate companies on cash flow, asset value, and market position rather than on recent momentum or sentiment.
PayPal generates substantial free cash flow and commands one of the largest user bases in digital payments. That combination is exactly what acquisition-driven buyers look for.
Burry’s framing also aligns with independent analysis that has flagged PayPal as an activist and acquisition target. Gordon Hackett analyst Don Bilson identified PayPal as a probable activist target after examining Societe Generale’s recent 13F disclosures, according to MEXC News.
That suggests Burry is not the only sophisticated investor currently eyeing the stock from the same angle.
PayPal also has an active share buyback program, meaning the company is reducing its float at prices Burry believes are below intrinsic value. That compounds per-share value over time even if the stock does not immediately recover. For a value investor looking at a multi-year horizon, that is a meaningful structural support.
Santiago/Getty Images
The broader pattern PayPal fits into
PayPal is not Burry’s only move, but it is the one most focused on fintech specifically. His June 12 post also addressed additions to Adobe (ADBE), Alibaba (BABA), and Veeva Systems (VEEV), all names that share the same characteristic: large, established businesses trading at valuations that reflect too much pessimism and too little of their underlying cash generation.
Burry addressed Alibaba and Veeva with equally specific language. On Veeva, his pushback was direct.
“The Salesforce threat is only relevant to a small part of its business. The significance has been far overstated,” he wrote, according to GuruFocus.
Adobe, down roughly 27% year-to-date entering June, was cited by Burry for having gross margins near all-time highs despite the stock’s decline, a compression in valuation he described as deep value, according to Investing.com. All four names, including PayPal, are running active buyback programs and carry minimal debt, which Burry has specifically flagged as important given ongoing technical selling pressure in software names tied to private credit outflows.
What else the data shows about PayPal’s setup right now:
- PayPal’s free cash flow generation has remained substantial even during its period of stock underperformance, with the company generating approximately $6 billion in free cash flow in 2025, according to Seeking Alpha. That is the kind of number that makes a company interesting to acquirers regardless of revenue growth rate.
- PayPal’s valuation has compressed to levels that place it at a meaningful discount to historical multiples and to fintech peers, even as the company processes hundreds of billions of dollars in payment volume annually and retains a user base running into the hundreds of millions, according to Investing.com.
- New PayPal CEO Alex Chriss, who took over in September 2023, has been implementing margin improvement initiatives that management argues will show up meaningfully in the numbers through 2026 and 2027, according to GuruFocus. Burry’s note that management turnover is still “hurting the stock” suggests he sees that leadership transition as an unresolved overhang rather than a resolved one.
- Burry’s prior puts on Palantir and Nvidia earlier this year, which proved accurate in timing if not always in duration, show he is willing to be actively wrong before being right, and that the PayPal position fits a pattern of high-conviction calls made when sentiment is at its most negative, according to MEXC News.
What Burry’s transparency signals about his conviction level
What stands out about the June 12 Substack post is how openly Burry is explaining himself. He typically lets 13F filings speak for themselves. Publishing specific reasoning on four names in a single post, including a short, pointed comment on PayPal that effectively names the buyer thesis, is not standard behavior for a manager who has historically been guarded about his process.
The exception was his May 9 Substack post on MercadoLibre, which he published before the 13F deadline, an unusually direct move. The June 12 post continues that pattern. For investors, the transparency itself may be the signal: Burry appears to want the reasoning on record, which tends to happen when conviction is high and the timeline is shorter than his typical multi-year horizon.
Related: Michael Burry doubles down on his Nvidia and stock market call