The Zip (ASX: Z1P) share price is currently up around 40% after announcing acquisition news and a capital raising.
What is Zip?
Zip provides customers with a revolving line of credit to finance their retail purchase with its brands of Zip Pay, Zip Money and Pocketbook. It is one of the largest Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) providers in Australia. Some of its largest clients include Bunnings Warehouse, Appliances Online, EB Games and Officeworks. As of 2019, Zip Co says it has more than 16,000 retail partners and 1.3 million customers in Australia.
Why is the Zip share price soaring?
Zip announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the rest of the shares of buy now, pay later Quadpay, which is based in New York.
Quadpay shareholders will be entitled to receive up to 119 million Zip shares at the completion of the deal, equivalent to around 23.3% of Zip. The deal implies a value of $403 million for Quadpay.
Zip said the deal would increase Zip’s total transaction volume (TTV) and revenue per share.
Why does Zip want to acquire Quadpay?
The idea is that it will build on Zip’s global strategy. The US is the world’s largest retail market which is more than 15x bigger than Australia. Quadpay is supposedly one of the leading buy now, pay later businesses in the US.
After the deal is complete Zip will have operations across Australia, New Zealand, the US, the UK and South Africa. Combined, it will have annualised TTV of $3 billion, annualised revenue of $250 million, 3.5 million customers and 26,200 merchants.
Quadpay would be an important part of that combined business. At the end of March 2020 it had annualised revenue of $70 million and annualised TTV of $900 million. It also has an industry-leading net transaction margin of more than 2%. The Quadpay app is ranked in the top 100 US shopping apps with a rating of 4.8.
The co-founders and joint CEOs of Quadpay, Adam Ezra and Brad Lindenberg, will joint the Zip leadership team and will be responsible for growing the US business.
US investor comes on board
Zip also said it had entered into an agreement with CVI Investments to raise up to $200 million through the issue of convertible notes and the exercise of warrants. The notes have a conversion price of $5.5328, a 50% premium to the share price on 29 May 2020 while the warrants have a initial exercise price of $5.1639.
Zip management comments
Zip CEO and co-founder Larry Diamond said: “We are delighted and excited to have the QuadPay team join the Zip family. As a strategic investor in the business, we have spent considerable time with the founders, Adam and Brad, and share a united vision of disrupting the outdated credit card with a digital, and fairer alternative. The US is a critical part of our global strategy and vital as merchants increasingly look for a global payments solution.”
Summary
Zip seems very keen to achieve its international growth through acquisitions rather than organically doing it. But that strategy can work. I’ve long preferred Zip to Afterpay. I don’t know how many competitors the global retail market will be able to support in the future, so for a payment business generating growth, I’d rather go for Pushpay (ASX: PPH).
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Disclosure: At the time of writing, Jaz doesn’t own shares in any of the businesses mentioned.
