The IOUpay Ltd (ASX: IOU) share price is pushing higher this afternoon, breaking a 4-day streak of losses. The Malaysia-based buy now pay later (BNPL) provider's shares were up 29% today on abnormally high volume.
At the time of writing IOU shares were rapidly being exchanged at 62 cents per share, up 24.5% — hitting a volume of 42.9 million shares traded.
Flying on the residual cap raise winds
With no news out from the speculative BNPL provider today, we turn to recent events for potential catalysts.
It certainly has been a rollercoaster month for IOUpay as the company entered February at 16 cents a share. By mid-month, the BNPL space had attracted more excitement, throttling IOUpay to an all-time high of 85 cents. However, the share price then appeared to lose its gusto, falling back to 49 cents by 23 February. Although, not before management took advantage of the excitement to announce a capital raise.
The capital raise adds a further $50 million to IOU's balance sheet to aid in growth initiatives including digital payments and to accelerate new business development opportunities in the BNPL space within South East Asia. Sophisticated and institutional investors took up the offer of 100 million new shares at 50 cents per share.
IOU's shares took a tumble over the last week, likely due to the steep 28.6% discount offered in the cap raise, to the last close price upon announcement. So now potentially investors are seeing the event in a new light — more money, more potential… maybe. Considering today's volume is in excess of the company's monthly average, investors are certainly excited about something.
IOUpay share price during BNPL selloff
IOUpay certainly wasn't the only BNPL provider that suffered a fall in share price over the last week. Most of the space has flicked the switch around mid-month and began heading in the negative territory. For comparison, here are the returns for some notable BNPL stocks in the last 5 days:
- IOUpay Ltd (ASX: IOU) down 16.3%
- Afterpay Ltd (ASX: APT) down 13.1%
- Zip Co Ltd (ASX: Z1P) down 12.5%
- Splitit Payments Ltd (ASX: SPT) down 10.5%
IOUpay is breaking the trend today, with most other BNPL shares still trending downwards. The IOUpay share price has now gained 5,500% in the past 12 months, boosting its market capitalisation to $221 million.
