Typically with a company releasing an earnings report, the given company will release their earnings at a scheduled time, typically either at the beginning or close of trading. Releasing part of their earnings via Twitter Inc. in the middle of the day is not expected, but that’s the story of Affirm Holdings Inc. today.
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. The tweet reported that Affirm saw strong revenue growth – which is true but did not give the complete picture of the company’s results, which included missing 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 inadvertently due to human error. The company then released its earnings report early, causing its share price to drop as much as 30%.
For the quarter ending Dec. 31, Affirm reported a net loss of $159.7 million or 57 cents per share, compared to $26.6 million or 38 cents per share a year earlier. Revenue came in at $361 million, up 77% year-over-year.
Analysts had been predicting earnings per share loss of 32 cents on revenue of $329.1 million.
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. Activive consumers grew 150% year-over-year to 11.2 million in the quarter, a figure that was also 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 seven 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 21.42% to $58.68. The slide continued after-hours with the company’s share price dropping a further 7.29% to $54.40 as of 8 p.m. EST.
