The Freelancer Ltd (ASX: FLN) share price has rocketed up 18.5% today.
Freelancer is a global crowdsourcing marketplace website where organisations and individuals can advertise jobs that freelancers can compete to complete. Freelancer also runs Escrow.com, which it describes as the leading provider of secure online payments and online transaction management for consumers and businesses with over US$4 billion secured. You can see how the two services would work well together.
The combined business generated an all-time record in the first quarter for cash receipts of $14 million, which was up 15.8% on the prior corresponding period. The total gross payment volume (GPV) was also an all-time record of $204.3 million – up 25.6%.
The Freelancer segment delivered a GPV record of $45.9 million, which was up $45.9 million.
Overall, Freelancer generated positive operating cash flow in the first quarter of FY19 of $2 million and ended the quarter with cash of $35.1 million.
On the operational side of things, Freelancer said the major development work in deploying a new front-end technical stack continued, which aims to improve the user experience, site speed and hopefully improve conversion & retention.
The company also announced Arrow Electronics as the first commercial enterprise customer from Freelancer Enterprise. The new platform allows Fortune 500 companies and 'innovative technology creators' to design and build hardware products through access to over half a million skilled electronic and electrical engineers.
Freelancer also announced that Freightlancer was licensed to operate in the US as a freight broker (marketplace). It was also integrated into Escrow.com so that freight options are provided via checkout on direct transactions created from Escrow.com.
Foolish takeaway
Continuing positive operating cashflow is a great milestone for Freelancer because it means it can fund its own growth. The great thing about technology businesses like Freelancer is that because the platform already exists a lot of additional revenue falls to the bottom line apart from a (likely) small rise in operating expenses.
It would have been better to buy Freelancer shares a year ago when they were half the value they are now, but I'd be happy to buy a small parcel today on the positive updates.
