Affirm shares plunged after the so-called buy now, pay later company posted a wider-than-expected loss for its fiscal 2023 first quarter.
Investors are paying close attention to Affirm’s (ticker: AFRM) earnings as they should offer clues to the health of the consumer amid challenging macroeconomic conditions.
Affirm encourages consumers to buy an item and pay for it in four interest-free payments every two weeks, or at a low-interest rate over a few months. So far, Affirm doesn’t see much weakness in the consumer, noting in Tuesday’s earnings report that “delinquency rates remain at or below prepandemic levels.”
But even with that bit of good news, Affirm posted a loss of 86 cents a share on $362 million in revenue. Results slightly missed projections by analysts surveyed by FactSet who expected that Affirm would lose 84 cents a share on $364 million in revenue.
Affirm shares plunged 15% in after-hours trading as investors were put off by the earnings miss as well as weaker-than-hoped-for guidance. The lender expects revenue of $400 million to $420 million in its fiscal second quarter and full-year revenue in a range of $1.6 billion to $1.675.
Affirm’s model worked great when interest rates were near 0%, but that is not the case anymore. The Federal Reserve has raised he federal-funds rate to nearly 4%, up from around zero in March.
More rate hikes are certainly coming. The fear is that the Fed will engineer a recession to bring down inflation and unemployment will soar.
That doesn’t bode well for companies like Affirm. Indeed, analysts seem to be braced for deteriorating results. Less than half the analysts surveyed by FactSet rate Affirm the equivalent of a Buy. Shares were off 83% this year ahead of earnings, recently trading around $15.35.
The plunge in shares comes even as Affirm has grown revenue to $362 million from $269 million year over year. The company has integrated itself with some e-commerce giants, including partnership deals with Shopify (SHOP) and Amazon.com (AMZN). Far more consumers are using buy now, pay later, including a new service through Apple (AAPL), though that also poses morecompetitionfor Affirm.
However, Affirm may now be a victim of its own success.
The company saw its stock soar during the pandemic. Shares changed hands at nearly $170 apiece in November 2021 as households, still living under pandemic restrictions, increasingly shopped online. Near-zero interest rates, which allowed Affirm to easily offer interest-free installment loans, also helped. As the business took off, more competitors edged in, including Block (SQ).
But 2022 has been much less kind. Households are feeling squeezed by inflation, stoking fears that they may default on loans. Rising interest rates also increase Affirm’s financing costs for funding loans to consumers. And there is far more competition from fintechs, banks, and credit card networks like Mastercard (MA).
Despite the headwinds, some analysts expect Affirm to manage through the risks, fueling a higher stock price.
“Affirm has an opportunity to be a key financial service provider to the Gen Y/Z demo,” James Faucette, analyst at Morgan Stanley, wrote ahead of earnings. He does acknowledge that credit concerns will persist for a few quarters, but he thinks the company will power through. He rates the shares Overweight with a $53 price target.
Analysts at J.P. Morgan have a Neutral rating on Affirm and a $26 price target. They note thatrecent results from PayPal Holdings (PYPL) and Block, which are also in the buy now, pay later space, show “fairly stable loss trends,” which should bode well for Affirm’s prospects. The $26 price target assumes a 15 times multiple on Affirm’s projected earnings over the next 12 months.
“We believe AFRM is poised for strong volume growth, fueled by partnerships with Shopify and Amazon, but our bullishness is tempered by AFRM’s fairly unproven underwriting model and consumer credit concerns,” Reginald Smith, analyst at J.P. Morgan, wrote.
