Affirm Holdings (NASDAQ: AFRM) has found itself in hot water after the buy-now-pay-later firm accidentally leaked its own second quarter earnings early, sending its share price tumbling downwards.
The company was meant to release the information after hours, but somebody operating the company Twitter account appears to have been a bit over excited.
Eagle-eyed investors were able to see a positive sounding tweet ahead of time, which celebrated a “great quarter”. It also parroted Affirm’s total number of transactions increasing by 218% and active consumers rising by 150%.
The tweet was hastily deleted, but the company still opted to release its earnings early. The company's share price, which had jumped in reaction to the tantalising tweet, dived by more than 30% as it emerged that it had not told the full story.
Towards the end of the day’s trading, AFRM stock was actually halted for volatility.
The company apologised and said the early release was the result of “human error”.
This apology looks to have failed to quell the anger of investors though, with some replying that the error had led to them losing large amounts of money and demanding refunds or SEC investigations.
This was reflected in AFRM’s share price, which had fallen by more than 20% by the end of the day.
AFRM's Earnings
Revenue still topped expectations, coming in at $361m for the three-month period against forecasts of $328.8m.
However, the company’s revenue outlook fell short of Wall Street’s expectations. Affirm said the third quarter revenues were likely to fall between $325m and $335m.
Additionally, losses were greater than expected, coming in at 57 cents per share when analysts had been expecting 34 cents a share loss, according to Refinitiv.
There was positive news too though. Gross merchandise volume has leapt by around 115% compared to the same period 12 months prior, climbing to $4.5bn.
This revenue and volume growth has come as Affirm’s availability has soared, with active merchants rising from 8,000 in the same period last year to 168,000.
Consequently, active consumers shot up by 150% to 11.2 million and increased by 2.5 million, or 29%, compared to the prior period.
