The Laybuy Holdings Ltd (ASX: LBY) share price is charging upwards today. This follows the release of a quarterly trading update from the buy now, pay later (BNPL) services provider.
At the time of writing, shares in Laybuy are fetching 56 cents per share, up 14.4%. Despite this, the small-cap is still a distance from its 52-week high of $1.81 set back in October 2020.
Let's take a closer inspection of today's freshly released details.
Image source: Getty Images
What's moving the Laybuy share price today?
In this morning's update, the instalment payment company shared details of its existing and new debt facilities as well as an update on trading for the quarter ended 30 September 2021.
The market appears to be welcoming the information contained in the price-sensitive announcement. For those short on time, here's a quick summary of the highlights:
- New debt facility secured for £30 million to support UK loan book growth
- Kiwibank loan facility limit increased to NZ$30 million
- Achieved a record Gross merchanise value (GMV) of NZ$206 million in Q2
- September GMV reached a record NZ$78.5 million
- Active customers up 57% to 889,000
- Active merchants up 86% to 11,700
What happened during the quarter?
For Laybuy, it was a quarter of positioning for further growth and flexibility in Q2 FY22. Namely, the company's changes to its loan facilities.
In Q2, a new debt facility was signed with US-based lending provider, Partners for Growth (PFG). This £30 million facility will be used to extend and accelerate Laybuy's growth in its fast-growing United Kingdom operations.
In addition, the BNPL player was able to increase its facility with Kiwibank from NZ$20 million to NZ$30 million. Along with the increase in value, the Kiwibank facility has been extended to 30 June 2023. As a result of these loan changes, Laybuy states it now has funding to support GMV of up to NZ$2 billion.
Speaking of GMV, the latest quarter has been a record period for the company in terms of GMV on an annualised basis. In Q2, Laybuy's GMV reached a record NZ$206 million, which when annualised comes to NZ$825 million. This represents an increase of 62% year-over-year. These record achievements bode well for the Laybuy share price.
Meanwhile, gross merchandise value experienced a substantial surge in the UK, increasing 93% year over year on an annualised basis to NZ$446 million.
Commenting on this, Laybuy managing director Gary Rohloff said:
We continue to deliver against our strategy and have again seen strong growth in GMV in quarter two of FY22.
Since September 2020, we have added more than 5,400 active merchants and have added 321,000 new active customers, which is helping drive impressive growth across all regions, particularly in our growth market of the UK. This is particularly pleasing as the company heads towards the busy Christmas season.
Since then
A positive for the Laybuy share price, the company has since experienced additional growth in October. According to the release, active customers have now surpassed 900,000. Concurrently, active merchants and active UK merchants exceeded 12,000 and 3,000 respectively.
The company reiterated that it remains on track to reach its $1 billion GMV target for FY22.
