Buy now, pay later leader Afterpay Touch Group Ltd (ASX: APT) saw its share price rise by 4.5% today, making it the top performer within the ASX 200 (ASX: XJO).
Afterpay didn't actually announce any news today, however its main competitor in Australia – Zip Co Ltd (ASX: Z1P) – did give a trading update.
Zip announced its quarterly numbers to December 2019. Compared to the first quarter of FY20, it achieved quarterly revenue growth of 24% to $38.5 million. Receivables rose by 33% to $1.04 billion over the three months.
Zip said that it achieved record quarterly transaction volume of $562.6 million, which was up 40% on the first quarter and it's up 85% year on year. Zip's customer numbers increased by 24% to 1.8 million over the quarter and Zip's merchant numbers grew by 17% to 20,875 over the quarter.
Whilst Zip is a different business to Afterpay, the two have been on similar growth trajectories so it's quite easy to assume that Afterpay is going reveal impressive growth for the December 2019 quarter too. When you take Afterpay's impressive November growth numbers and look at the December quarter growth revealed by Zip and the ABS' stats, things are looking good in the near-term for Afterpay.
Foolish takeaway
Afterpay has been one of the hottest shares on the ASX for a few years now. Threats of regulation and competition has not been enough to dampen sentiment or the growth. I don't know what the right price to pay for Afterpay is, there are a lot of variables when it comes to potential outcomes at this share price. I can think of easier growth shares to focus on.
