Rachel Warren

a dominant global stablecoin player.

That's something that I think there might be some interest in.

There's also this idea that Stripe might only target very specific units, right?

Like Venmo, for example, to gain a consumer wallet or Braintree to scale their merchant processing business.

I think right now, this is a lot of speculation.

You know, Lou did a good job of outlining kind of the different ways this could go

I do think it's very possible that we could look at this deal as maybe acting as a mechanism for Stripe to go public.

And that would allow the combined entity to trade, of course, on a stock exchange, which is something we have seen a lot of rumors for years that Stripe was going to IPO and has reportedly kept delaying that.

So I think there's a lot more questions than answers right now.

I do think, though, that if, in fact, Stripe is interested in buying PayPal, it does pose an intriguing opportunity.

This is something that I think we're going to want to watch closely.

Excellence Q4 results, it was really a masterclass in the continued shift that they're executing from being this hardware-first company as they've been known to a high-margin software and AI powerhouse.

I mean, the headline numbers were incredibly impressive.

Revenue hit $797 million.

That was up 39% year-over-year.

Handily beat Wall Street's estimates.

Adjusted earnings per share of $2.15, way above the $1.60 estimate that Wall Street was looking for.

You know, they had a record $7.4 billion in annual bookings.

It's a 46% jump, and I think it shows just how much demand is growing for their ecosystem.

You know, really important to note as well, their AI era plan that they have been continuing to implement, which is all about embedding practical, high-impact AI capabilities across their hardware and software ecosystem, it seems to already be proving its worth.