Typically a company will release a quarterly earnings report at the close or sometimes the beginning of the stock market trading day. But today, Affirm Holdings Inc. accidentally released its earnings in the middle of the day, and the result wasn’t good.
Affirm was scheduled to release its earnings at 4 p.m. EST. However, the official Twitter account for Affirm tweeted some of the details after 1:30 p.m. EST. The tweet reported that Affirm saw strong revenue growth, which is true, but it didn’t give the complete picture of the company’s results, which included missing forecasts on earnings per share.
As a result of the tweet, shares in Affirm rose as much as 10% before Affirm deleted the tweet and claimed that the tweet had been sent out because of human error. The company then released its earnings report early, and its share price dropped as much as 30%.
For the quarter ended Dec. 31, Affirm reported a net loss of $159.7 million, or 57 cents per share, compared with $26.6 million or 38 cents per share a year earlier. Revenue jumped 77%, to $361 million. Analysts had been predicting a loss of 32 cents per share on revenue of $329.1 million.
Affirm is one of a number of so-called “buy now, pay later” firms, offering short-term and low-interest loans to consumers when they buy big-ticket items. online.
Gross merchandise volume in the company’s second quarter of fiscal 2022 was $4.5 billion, up 115% year-over-year. Active merchants using Affirm increased from 8,000 to 168,000 over the same period, driven by the adoption of Shop Pay Installments on Shopify Inc. Active consumers grew 150% year-over-year, to 11.2 million, a figure that was up 2.5 million or 29% from the previous quarter.
“Affirm’s strong growth accelerated this quarter, reflecting the key advantages of our superior technology and commitment to putting people first,” said Max Levchin, founder and chief executive officer of Affirm, said in a statement. “Over the last 12 months, we have added nearly 7 million active consumers to our network while enabling 168,000 merchant partners to better serve their customers.”
Looking forward, Affirm predicted revenue of between $1.29 billion and $1.31 billion, including Amazon.com Inc. transactions. Analysts had been predicting $1.27 billion.
Shares in Affirm closed regular trading down 21.4%, to $58.68. The slide continued after-hours with the company’s share price dropping a further 7%.
