Affirm stock slammed after early earnings release shows revenue outlook misses

This replaces an earlier report that incorrectly reported how Q2 revenue compared with analyst expectations. It has been corrected.

Shares of Affirm Holdings Inc. were plunging in Thursday afternoon trading after the buy-now pay-later company posted its latest earnings results more than an hour earlier than scheduled, showing higher-than-expected volume but a lower-than-anticipated revenue outlook.

The company reported a fiscal second-quarter net loss of $159.7 million, or 57 cents a share, compared with a loss of $26.6 million, or 38 cents a share, in the year-prior quarter.

Affirm
AFRM,
-21.65%
posted an operating loss of $196.2 million, whereas it posted an operating loss of $26.8 million a year earlier. The metric includes an $82 million increase in stock-based compensation following Affirm’s January 2021 initial public offering. It also reflects investments in product, hiring and marketing, per the company’s release.

Revenue rose to $361.0 million from $204.0 million, while analysts surveyed by FactSet had been looking for $329 million on average. Affirm reported gross merchandise volume of $4.5 billion, up from $2.1 billion a year earlier and ahead of the FactSet consensus, which was for $3.7 billion.

The company saw 150% growth in active consumers.

The stock plunged as much as 33% intraday after the results before paring losses to be down 18% in Thursday afternoon trading. Affirm’s shares had been up as much as 11.9% earlier Thursday, prior to the report’s initial release, after the company reportedly tweeted out aspects of its financial results ahead of time before deleting them.

An Affirm representative didn’t respond to MarketWatch’s request for comment on whether screenshots of the deleted tweet were authentic, but three of the metrics mentioned lined up with Affirm’s reported results.

For the current quarter, Affirm expects gross merchandise volume of $3.61 billion to $3.71 billion, while analysts had been expecting $3.5 billion. The company also anticipates revenue of $325 million to $335 million, whereas the FactSet consensus was for $335.5 million.

The stock has tumbled 54% over the past three months, while the S&P 500 index
SPX,
-2.20%
has slipped 2.7%.

Source: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/affirm-stock-slammed-after-early-earnings-release-shows-revenue-miss-11644524275?siteid=yhoof2&yptr=yahoo