All right, guys. Why don't we get the ball rolling, just to keep things on time. Really happy to have Affirm here with us. Affirm's a name that we've been covering now for really just a couple of quarters, a few quarters. We're really enjoying it as a company that clearly stands above others, not only around, you know, Buy Now, Pay Later and financing, but really just broad e-com and addressable to the consumer, really offering a great service to both merchants and consumers. Rob, we've had you here before. Really appreciate you coming back. Rob, the CFO of the company. Maybe just start off with, before we get into the details, high level, what you're seeing as the company's main accomplishments over the last year or so.
It's really changing so fast and growing so quickly. I'd love to start there.
Yeah. Yeah, thanks for having me. No, look, I think the business performed incredibly well over the last 12 months. We grew GMV about 39% over the last 12 months, and we've scaled-
Mm.
In our most recent quarter, we posted 30% adjusted operating income. I think really having success across both growth and profitability.
Mm-hmm
It is really critical to us. It's a core part of how we operate, and I think we've done it in a really compelling way as well through deepening our relationships with some of our direct-to-consumer offerings. Affirm Card is probably the most noteworthy product within that set. That business, that part of the business continues to perform incredibly well. We did about 16% of our GMV on Affirm Card in our last quarter, and about 14% of our users were also utilizing Affirm Card. We've seen really nice traction in terms of take-up of that product. And then outside of Card, you know, we've continued to land some really exciting merchant partnerships, both new and existing.
We signed a renewal in November with Amazon, which is our largest merchant partner, and also announced recently a renewal with Expedia. Then have brought on some new players, like Intuit and Lowe's as well, and also ServiceTitan. I think just across the board, I've been really happy with the way the business has performed.
Just before we get into the weeds, I wanna revisit this, and this wasn't even in order of the questions, but I wanna just remind people what the differentiation is. Why are these merchants signing on with you? What's really the value prop that you're providing that's resonating so well?
Well, I think increasingly the size of our consumer network is a real huge part of the value proposition that we bring to merchants. We have not quite 26 million active consumers on our services in the last year. I think when a merchant's looking to bring on a new payment type, the size of the-
Yeah
the consumer base that.
These are engaged.
You're bringing. Right. These are engaged and these consumers are showing up with, you know, financing almost already in hand.
Yeah.
I think that's a really important part. I also think the breadth of products that we offer from a loan perspective is pretty unique in the market. We do about 2/3s of our volume in monthly interest-bearing loans, and having that interest-bearing component allows us to be really flexible around how we monetize the loan. It can allow us to create a financing program for the merchant that meets all of their objectives, including cost of acceptance and then also the conversion rates they wanna drive.
I was gonna say.
Yeah
You're also showing cart size improvements, right?
Yeah.
I mean, it's really everything above, not just, you know, conversion rates, but.
Typically, the average order values that we see on our programs with a merchant, you know, sometimes they're multiples of what the merchant is seeing.
Yeah
Outside of the Affirm program.
Right. Again, this goes back to questions we got. I mean, is there disruption from, you know, AI. End of the day, you're offering real financing to these consumers. You're getting an engaged consumer for the merchants. It seems hard in our view to disrupt that. All right, let's go back. I mean, you had a strong fiscal second quarter in February that came out, 36% GMV growth, 23% active consumer growth, 29% RLTC growth. And then GAAP operating margins expanding to almost 11%. Just touch on the key highlights of the quarter in your view and where you're seeing the most momentum underlying that in the business.
Yeah. I mean, I think it was a great quarter financially. I mean, you touched on some-
Yeah
Of the highlights. We're really proud of the growth and really proud of the profitability. You know, I spoke to it at the open, but we also signed a renewal with Amazon for five years in that quarter.
Right.
We're really proud of that and excited to continue to partner with them. I'd have to call out the growth in Card, was just really incredible. I mean, we continued to see more than a doubling of users on a year-over-year basis opting into Card and more of a doubling of GMV.
Wow
As a result as well. I think continuing to build those direct-to-consumer products, that's been a big part of our success, and we expect that to continue.
Like, why are consumers taking on the card so much? I mean, is it just they're utilizing the wallet more and more, and so, you know, it's a nice add-on, or-
Yeah
Is there some feature around it that's helpful?
Well, as much as we're really proud of the merchant distribution that we have through our point-of-sale integrations, there are still merchants that haven't integrated with Affirm yet, and Card really fills the gap that's created there. A user can use Affirm Card anywhere that accepts Visa. We also think it's a smoother and more elegant way to transact offline. In-store usage.
Yeah
is about an order of magnitude higher on Card than it is in the rest of the business. We think that we found a way to take some friction out of Buy Now, Pay Later transactions for in-store situations.
You're at, I think, 14% or so, right, of your total users.
Yeah.
that actually have a card now. Has that still even into the quarter, are you still seeing the trends go in the right direction there? Where do you see that going at 14%?
Gosh, I would hesitate to put a cap on it. I mean, I think right now, you know, growth inflected positively from a user perspective in the December quarter. We would continue to expect that it becomes an increasingly meaningful part of the business. I think the great thing about Card is that the unit level economics are really, really strong. That allows us to really lean in pretty hard to continue to find ways to bring new users to the product.
Okay. Let's talk about guidance for a minute. Again, you had a very strong quarter. Your fiscal year guidance has 32.5% GMV growth, and RLTC, as a percentage of GMV just over 4%, which has really been your target for some time, right?
Yep.
GAAP operating margins just over 8% of the midpoint. Just any embedded assumptions in your guidance that you can share, and related to macro funding conditions, progress on key initiatives or any conservatism in there? Just help us understand your thought process on that.
Yeah, I mean, we revisit the guidance quarterly, and we try to reflect current conditions both in the funding markets, but also in terms of what we're seeing in repayment data with our consumers. That's all reflected in the guide. We utilize the forward rate curve at the time that we set the guidance. You know, the trends have actually been pretty stable on the credit side for us, and that shows up both in terms of the credit costs in the business, but also demand in the various industries that we map to from a GMV perspective. Really nothing noteworthy to call out in terms of underlying assumptions.
Okay. All right. Back to the RLTC for a minute. Again, you've historically described 3%-4% as a long-term range for the business, but you've landed above 4% now. For fiscal 2025, you're guiding to just over 4% again, right now. Just as we look over time, I mean, if you could just share your latest thoughts on this target range, how you've been balancing profitability and growth a little bit more.
Sure. Maybe I'll just go back for a second. I mean, that 3%-4% range really was established as part of the IPO process.
Yep. Yep.
on our side. At that time, we were very heavy into monthly installment loans, particularly 0% monthly installment loans. Actually, Peloton was our largest merchant at the time. We had some new partnerships coming online, namely Amazon and Shopify, and we wanted to leave space for those programs to scale. Really the 3%-4% range was to allow for a different mix of loan products, particularly Pay in 4 becoming a bigger part of the business. You know, if you look at our last quarter, Pay in 4 was about 1/6 of our overall volume. I think we've sort of found a little bit more of a range for what we think the ultimate mix of the various loan products can be.
Yep.
It probably means that in May at the investor forum, we'll revisit that 3%-4% range. You know, where we sit today, it's hard for me to imagine a situation where we go all the way to three in the short run here.
Yeah. Yeah.
Again, I think the range was purposely very broad, and we're proud of the fact that we've been able to operate sorta towards the high end.
Okay. Look, I mean, your business from an idiosyncratic standpoint is obviously trending really well. Let's talk macro for a quick moment.
Yeah
...given you should have a pretty good vision on some of the different consumer profiles. What are you seeing out there? Obviously, K-shaped economy is the discussion.
Sure
Quite often, just help us understand some of the credit metrics you're seeing, and how you feel about it?
You know, I think one structural advantage that we have today at our scale is that 96% of our transactions come from repeat borrowers in a given quarter.
Right.
That trend's been true for the last several quarters. Increasingly, we're extending loans, you know, albeit small loans, to consumers that we know and consumers that have a history of paying us back and paying us back on time. I think we're well-served with that setup. Otherwise, I mean, we really tend to manage the business to what we call first payment delinquencies. When a borrower gets to that first payment event, which in our business typically happens about 30 days after origination, what's the delinquency rate for that first payment? That's typically the best leading indicator of the credit health of that cohort of loans.
Sure.
At our scale point, you know, that's a real deep data set to evaluate. We're originating, you know, on average about $150 million of GMV a day. We think we get a really good signal from the first payment event. Right now we're seeing repayment events that are absolutely in line with our expectations. There is risk in our business. Not everyone is gonna pay back on time, but what's important to us is that we're able to rank order risk and that the repayment outcomes are in line with our expectation, and that's 100% what we're seeing right now.
Are they in line with recent trends also? Have they changed at all, or are they still in line? Are they consistent?
No, they're very consistent.
Okay.
Yeah, we really haven't had a meaningful change in our credit posture. We're always making optimizations across various merchant programs, but our credit posture's been pretty static.
Okay. Credit sounds stable. How about spending volume levels?
I mean, we grew GMV 36% in the December quarter. That's actually up on a year-over-year basis in terms of growth rate.
Yeah. Very strong.
Versus where we were in the December quarter a year ago. We're not seeing any sort of pullback in terms of demand. Actually we've hit a bit of an asymptote with our average order values, and so the spending patterns have been pretty consistent.
Okay. Talking about profitability, I know you mentioned a moment ago with RLTC that it, you know, will probably get some updated thoughts at Investor Day in May. Just on margins, again, we might get more than that as well. What is the real investment required for this business to keep growing at this rate? I mean, how do you think about that as a trade-off versus profitability going forward?
Yeah, I mean, we really don't view it as a trade-off. We view it as an and. You know, I think both are.
Doable
Definitely doable and very important to how we think about building business plans internally. I think we're fortunate in that the loans that we create are very profitable. That's true across the spectrum of product offerings that we have. One of the fastest-growing parts of the business, Affirm Card, is one of the most profitable as well. I think it's a great setup for us to have. We just signed, you know, a five-year renewal with our largest merchant partner, and so we have really good line of sight into how that program should evolve over the next five years, which gives us a lot of confidence in the business as well. You know, for us, I think we've demonstrated really nice operating leverage over the last several years.
We've done it while continuing to grow the business, and if you look at the last 12 months, we've grown the business at accelerating rates as well.
Right.
I think you should expect, you know, more of the same.
In terms of margin expansion.
Yeah. I mean, I think continued margin expansion is the way that I would say it. You know, we are looking at expanding our use of AI tools. I think for us, that's gonna be a mechanism to drive more efficiency. I don't think for us it means that we would look to reduce headcount per se, but I think it's gonna be an enabler to do probably more with more. You know, so I think we would continue to expect some modest and continued growth in headcount, given all the things that are on our plate that we think are really compelling opportunities. We've got international expansion, we've got the bank application out there, and we've got a really exciting partnership with both Fiserv and FIS.
Yeah
... that I'm sure we'll talk about here. I think we've just got a really long list of really compelling opportunities and we're trying to make sure that we get as much new- product development through our teams as possible and AI has been a way that we expect to continue to accelerate.
Right. AI will help with product velocity internally.
Yeah.
It doesn't sound like you have any intention to reduce headcount. Could we moderate headcount growth because of it?
Yeah. You know, been pretty measured about headcount growth. I think we've grown headcount about 10% on a year-over-year basis as of today, looking back 12 months. I think that level of growth is pretty appropriate. You know, we're right in the throes of our planning for fiscal 2027, and again, we'll speak to some of this in the investor forum. You know, it's about making sure that we maximize the opportunity set that's in front of us, but also continue to show continued operating leverage.
Right. There's a strong mix shift.
Yeah. Yeah.
happening in the business, which should lend to better margins anyway.
Yeah.
How about from a competitive standpoint? I mean, I'm curious. We had a panel yesterday with a number of other smaller, you know, companies that provide financing for consumers, whether it's Pay in 4 installments or others. Just talk a little bit about what you're seeing out there. We've also had PayPal talking about being more aggressive and trying to effectively buy positioning.
Mm
with merchants. I mean, you probably haven't seen it yet, but I'm curious what you're seeing out there.
Yeah, there's really nothing I can point to that says there's been a marked change in competitive intensity, I would say, in either direction.
Okay.
You know, most of our growth in any given year on the merchant side comes from our existing merchants. We're really focused on optimizing the opportunity that we have with the merchants we already know. I think we're gonna continue to win our fair share of new merchants as well. You know, we're really excited about some of the newer logos we've brought in. I mean, logos like Costco, Lowe's, and then the Intuit program that is just now going live. You know, again, it feels like win rates are at a really healthy place from a merchant perspective. We're continuing to see really nice growth with existing merchants.
You're not seeing any change competitively impacting your ability to win business or even customer from a consumer standpoint?
No.
Okay. That's good. We talked about AI internally, but from an agent, e-commerce comes up and it's perceived as, by some, as it could be a risk.
Mm.
Mainly because folks think maybe you're gonna, you know, folks will ask ChatGPT to just buy on whatever best tool possible out there, any credit, any credit card or
Yeah
How do you respond to that?
I mean, I think our thesis is rooted in the belief that we're unique in our ability to solve a real need for our consumers, and the need for financing doesn't necessarily change and certainly doesn't go away if you're utilizing an agentic tool to facilitate a transaction. I think ultimately we provide affordability for consumers, and that's something that's gonna exist no matter how the consumer is enacting the transaction.
It's really our hope that with the way that we've built our products, through the fact that we don't utilize late fees or any sort of gimmicks or fine print in our transactions, that an agent's gonna be able to understand that what you see is what you get with Affirm, and the all-in costs of an Affirm loan hopefully will show up as being really favorable to some of the other options that are gonna be out there.
Right. I tend to agree with that.
Yeah.
Okay. Let's touch on 0% APR for a minute, 'cause it's, I mean, it grew 65% year-over-year last quarter versus overall GMV up 36%. Clearly it's resonating with folks. I think even in your promotional event in October, it accounted for over 15% of total GMV during the month. What do you see about it that's working so well and really resonating?
I think it's really compelling on both the merchant and the consumer side of the equation, and that creates a nice flywheel, to be honest. I mean, it-
By the way.
Yeah
Merchants are funding this, right?
Merchants are funding this, yes.
To put the economics in perspective.
Yes
This really has to be.
Yeah. I think this is.
worthwhile.
This has gotten sort of misconstrued somehow. Our 0% programs are profitable. They attract a higher credit borrower to our ecosystem, which we think is a really nice complement to the 2/3s of our volume that runs through interest-bearing. 0% loans are, I think, an important part of the story. Between monthly 0%s and our Pay in 4 product, which is also 0%, that's about 1/3 of our business. The lion's share is still happening with interest-bearing loans. 0% s have been great. They drive really nice uptake with consumers. The consumer is more likely to say yes if they have a set of 0% offers presented to them versus interest-bearing. There's a nice uptick there that accretes to both Affirm in terms of more GMV, but also to our merchants.
Right.
I think we've been able to demonstrate with our merchants that allocating a bit more in terms of dollars to MDR, to merchant discount rate, to pay more for a 0% loan, that's a worthwhile investment for them, and it's able to help them accelerate growth in their business and drive higher conversion.
Right. Okay. How about international expansion? Another area that I know you've talked about for a little while now, but it's grown in terms of presence and opportunity for the company. Just, you know, you continue to make progress. I know Shop Pay Installments now launched in the U.K., as an example. Announcements of key merchant partners. Just what does the opportunity look like for you?
Yeah. It still feels like we're very, very early innings in the U.K. We're continuing to do the optimization work that we need to do with Shopify before making that widely available, and making that a default part of Shop Pay. This is a very similar approach that we took in the U.S., and that launch has proven to be incredibly successful. We have a lot of confidence that we're on the right path with Shopify. We're also scaling Canada with them as well.
Nice.
A lot going on with Shop. Then I think outside of Shopify in the U.K., we're continuing to post some really nice merchant wins as well. We just announced Virgin Media O2, which is the Virgin Mobile telco. They're a very large retailer of handsets, so financing's an important part of that ecosystem. We're excited to partner with them. We've announced Wayfair as well. We're starting to land some large merchants in country, and it's a nice mix of brand-new merchants and also some U.S. Merchants that we're expanding geographically with.
Okay. Before we go into the bank application or some other areas like vertical differentiation or focus on diversification, sounds like the key drivers are all trending as well as you would've hoped. I mean, per your, you know, when you thought about setting your guide, these are all trending in line-
Yeah
Maybe even better in many cases versus your assumptions even now. Is that fair?
I think that's right. I mean, we've now guided to full year FY 2026, I guess, three times. We've taken our estimates up twice, right?
Yeah.
We continue to be incrementally more positive on the full year, and the business, I think, has performed really well.
That's great to hear.
Yeah.
Just one more on the business itself. Vertical diversification. Again, over the years, you guys have diversified verticals that you operate in. I think we've seen you announce existing exciting partnerships like the one with ServiceTitan. Just touch on key areas you see more opportunity for that.
Yeah
diversification.
I mean, I think services is definitely an easy one to point to. We're really excited about ServiceTitan and Intuit. I think Intuit has the potential to really accelerate us in the services vertical. You know, we are gonna be part of the invoicing that happens within QuickBooks, right, which I think has a lot of the tenets of transactions that are very squarely in our wheelhouse. You know, these tend to be larger dollar, sometimes non-discretionary, right? If you have a hole in your roof, right, you need that roof patched. We think it has a really great setup in terms of transactions that lend themselves to the sort of financing that we provide.
Yeah.
We're excited to partner with Intuit to make the integration as smooth as possible, both for the underlying merchants, but also for consumers as well.
That's really neat. All right. I wanna ask you about the bank application you announced in January at least, that you submitted for a bank-
Yeah
... subsidiary. What does that mean for the business, both from a, you know, go-to-market and strategy standpoint, but also just economically? What does that mean in terms of profitability or other funding?
Yeah. I think, you know, in the long run, it'll be a mild positive for us. That said, we're still very early in the application process. We did just submit.
Sure
in January.
How long do you expect it to take?
I mean, we would expect maybe a year, I think, is a good-
Okay
estimate. We don't have ultimate line of sight on when, if or when the approval decision would be made, but I think internally we're thinking about it in terms of hopefully getting to a decision within a year. So it's gonna be a while, and then once we're live, you know, assuming we do go live with a bank, we will be in a period of ramping the bank subsidiary in a pretty measured way. So, you know, really for us, it's about bringing diversification to how loans are originated. You know, the Affirm bank would be another bank that's originating loans for us, and then also maybe some diversification around how we issue virtual cards and a couple other places where we touch a partner bank.
We think there's enough scale in the business and frankly enough growth in the business that we don't expect to, you know, really alter any of our relationships with existing bank partners. We expect the bank to be there to absorb some of the growth that we expect in those channels.
Okay. All right. I'm gonna ask one more, and then guys, anyone in the audience, you're welcome to ask a question or two as well. You know, also in January, you announced Fiserv as a new partner, similar to what you, I think you had with FIS already.
Yeah.
This actually came up in our chat with Stephanie, the CEO of FIS, yesterday, and so they're excited about it. I mean, curious how you see that going, and the opportunity really to provide for cards, debit cards at banks.
Yeah.
Just talk about the go-to-market there and how that should trend.
Maybe just to zoom out for a second, I mean, the partnerships that have been announced there really we're partnering with both Fiserv and FIS to bring the Affirm Card functionality to debit cards at banks.
Yep.
We're hoping to utilize the network of banks that Fiserv and FIS have amassed to expand the distribution of Affirm Card. We think it's hopefully pretty compelling for banks themselves where they may have a scaled debit program, but they may see their consumers utilizing other credit card providers outside of the bank for the consumer's financing needs. With Affirm Card, we can keep those financed purchases in the bank's ecosystem and partner with the bank to bring a pretty seamless user experience to the bank's customers.
Okay. A lot going on. Seems like it's going well obviously, and we're happy to hear that. Just to wrap it, anything you wanna share that in terms of your own investments you wanna make that you need to do for the company to succeed from here? M&A, anything else that's worth calling out?
I don't think so. I mean, I think we've got a pretty solid operating plan through the remainder of this fiscal year. We've got good line of sight into FY 2027 at this point. I think we're really pretty heads- down on executing.
Good.
Yeah, there's a lot of momentum in the business both in terms of growth and profitability.
Great. All right. Well, we have a few minutes, guys, so I'm happy to take a couple of questions if anyone has. Yeah, there's one in the back.
Hi. Thanks, Rob. I understand very early days, but if a bank subsidiary is established, how would you view a steady state funding mix, understanding very long term, but just between ABS, forward flow, deposits would be in there, warehouse. What would a good balance look like for you?
I mean, just maybe for everyone, the deposits would be the net new funding channel. Today we utilize warehouse, ABS and forward flow. We would wanna be thoughtful and measured about how we scale deposit funding. I would expect that over the course of sort of the three-year period post the launch of the bank, that we're probably scaling to roughly maybe 10% of our funding coming from deposits towards the tail end of that period. That's sort of an early estimate that we would refine, if and when we start to be closer to going live with the bank.
Any other questions? Oh, there's one right in the back.
Quick question. As Affirm expands globally, have you guys considered branching off into stablecoins for like cross-border benefits?
Yeah. Today, the large majority of our volume is still happening in the U.S. Even as we have expanded into new markets for us, like Canada and now the U.K. as well, all of the volume happening in those markets is actually sort of happening in that single country. We haven't really seen much in terms of cross-border volume happening on our platform yet. I think if that were to change, we may revisit our thinking there, but right now it's we haven't prioritized stablecoins just given the setup that we have.
Oh, I see there's one more here, or two more it looks like.
Thanks. Is there anything new on the regulatory landscape around BNPL or anything new we need to worry about or focused on rates?
I don't think so. New York did come out with a proposed new legislation around BNPL. Our read of what's been proposed, we don't see it as any sort of headwind for our business. I think they're very focused on making sure they manage the fee load that can happen with BNPL transactions. In our model, you know, just fees are not part of the equation between us and the consumer. We came away from our first reading of that pretty positively, and I think it allows us to continue to do what we've been doing.
I think we have time for one last one.
Yeah.
Hey, Rob. Affirm's kinda more focused on higher upscale products for Buy Now, Pay Later, and you guys recently announced that you were gonna go into Buy Now, Pay Later through rent and kind of rent expenses. I'm kinda curious, and can you kind of explain how that's gonna work as well as if you're looking to go more, even more upscale beyond rent?
Yeah. We've actually seen average order values in our ecosystem come down. We're right around $275 today, so that's sort of the sweet spot where we're operating, and that's a function of the various programs that we support. Programs like Shopify and Amazon have a lower average order value than that overall average. In terms of the rent pilot that we have with Esusu, you know, that's something that we're testing into. It's really important to us that we have the right financing program for something like rent. In our case, we wanna make sure that the terms of the loan are less than 30 days. We don't wanna create these stacked loans of monthly rent obligations. But we do think that there's an ability to smooth cash flows for consumers.
In the case of rent, we wanna make sure that we do it in a very short-dated way.
Got it. Thank you.
All right. Guys, I think we're gonna wrap it up there. Rob, thank you very much for that.
Okay.
Great discussion. For everyone here, we have a 20-minute break, and then at 12:20 P.M., if you wanna be back for our macro and policy update with our economics team and our U.S. policy team. Thanks again, everybody.