Reports of a takeover offer have propped up PayPal's stock in recent months, but now the company may have to execute a turnaround on its own

PayPal's stock has fallen sharply from its pandemic-era peak.

PayPal Holdings may have to go it alone as a new report says that a widely discussed takeover pursuit is now off the table.

Shares of PayPal Holdings (PYPL) are down 17% in premarket action on Friday after Bloomberg News reported that a consortium led by payments rival Stripe and private-equity firm Advent International have abandoned plans to acquire PayPal. The report cited anonymous sources.

Reuters had reported in July that the consortium had teamed up and come up with an acquisition offer of $60.50 a share, which would have valued PayPal at more than $53 billion.

Advent declined to comment. PayPal and Stripe didn't immediately respond to MarketWatch's requests for comment.

PayPal's stock had gained 37% in the three months through Thursday's close, but it's down 82% from its peak level achieved in July 2021.

While the stock was an investor darling during the pandemic era, the company has found itself in a more competitive payment-technology market since then. Apple Pay has made meaningful inroads with shoppers, and browsers make it easy for users to store their payment credentials online.

William Blair analyst Andrew Jeffrey wrote last month that PayPal's "value proposition and tech stack lag disruptive competitors."

The company had viewed the Stripe/Advent offer as insufficient, and the two sides had been discussing a higher price, The Wall Street Journal reported in August. Michael Burry, the former hedge-fund manager depicted in "The Big Short," said last month that PayPal's true intrinsic value was between $75 and $115 a share and that a winning bid should be around $100 a share.

PayPal delivered an earnings beat last month, and while CEO Enrique Lores didn't comment directly on the Stripe takeover reports, he said the company wouldn't dismiss an acquisition in general.

"If we see levers or a path that we believe would create superior value for our shareholders than executing our current strategy, we would, of course, carefully consider them," he said told investors on the earnings call.

Lores came to PayPal from HP (HPQ), where he was viewed as an architect of the company's 2015 breakup with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). Since joining in March, he has tried to refocus the company on innovation.

-Barbara Kollmeyer