The Zip Co Ltd (ASX: ZIP) share price is in focus today after reporting its quarterly numbers to March 2024.
Zip offers buy now, pay later services, with its core markets being the US and Canada, as well as Australia and New Zealand.
March 2024 quarter highlights
Zip reported that it generated underlying group cash EBTDA (which is the EBITDA acronym without the I – interest) of $20.1 million.
It reported transaction volume of $2.4 billion for the quarter, which was an increase of 14.6% (though transaction numbers were flat), while revenue rose by 26.6% year on year to $219.2 million. These are solid numbers to help push the Zip share price higher.
However, quarter on quarter, total revenue was down 2.1%.
Impressively, Zip’s revenue margin improved to 9.1%, up from 8.3% in the third quarter of FY23. The cash transaction margin saw a huge increase to 3.9% for the latest quarter, up from 2.9% in the FY23 third quarter.
The active customer number reached 6 million at the end of the March 2024 quarter, with the number of merchants increasing 9.1% year on year to 77,700.
Divisional highlights
The ASX share revealed Zip Americas delivered a “particularly strong” total transaction value (TTV) performance of US$1.06 billion (up 43.6%) and revenue of US$75.3 million (up 49.2%).
The US bad debts continued to perform “well” with the monthly cohort loss rates of approximately 1.3% of TTV.
ANZ net bad debts were 3.49% of TTV at 31 March 2024, compared to 3.64% at 31 December 2023.
As a group, the net bad debt was 1.72% in the third quarter of FY24, an improvement from 1.89% in the third quarter of FY23 and 1.74% in the FY24 second quarter. Improvements could be essential to give investors confidence about the Zip share price.
Management commentary
The Zip CEO and Managing Director Cynthia Scott said:
During the quarter, Zip continued to focus on product innovation and delivering great customer and merchant outcomes. In the US, our collaboration with Google Pay experienced positive momentum continuing to scale. In Australia, we have seen strong customer engagement and unit economics with our new product, Zip Plus. We welcomed new merchants to the Zip platform including Vallarta and Follett in the US, Temu in ANZ, and Wynstan in AU and have a strong pipeline of merchants.
In driving operational excellence, Zip recently successfully financed approximately $1.1bn of receivables funding. During the quarter, Zip refinanced its AU receivables variable funding facility and subsequent to quarter end, Zip also completed a new warehouse and a $300.0m rated note issuance. Support from existing and new investors was strong and these financing initiatives have provided Zip with ample headroom to support future growth in the Australian business. We further strengthened our balance sheet with the outstanding face value of the Senior Convertible Notes reducing to $21.7m and available cash and liquidity improving to $95.2m.
Final thoughts on Zip shares
The Zip share price is up more than 4% in response to this update, which isn’t surprising considering its margins improved and revenue growth was strong. Can Zip keep growing its revenue and profitability at the same time that its revenue margin is so high (and keeps increasing)? Time will tell. The Zip market capitalisation is very high, so the market is expecting a lot. For now, there are other ASX growth shares I’d rather look at.
