The Afterpay Touch Group Ltd (ASX: APT) share price was on form again in November.
During the month the payments company's shares raced 12% higher. This compares to a 2.7% gain by the S&P/ASX 200 index.
Why did the Afterpay share price surge higher last month?
There were two main catalysts for this strong share price gain in November – a business update and the results of its AUSTRAC audit.
Afterpay's business update revealed further strong growth across all geographies and channels during the first four months of FY 2020.
At the end of October, the company's global underlying sales has climbed to $2.7 billion. This was a 110% increase on the prior corresponding period.
On an annualised basis, underlying sales had increased to over $8.5 billion at the end of October.
A key driver of this growth has been another large jump in active customers. Afterpay's active customers grew 137% on the prior corresponding period to 6.1 million. In October Afterpay onboarded an average of 15,000 new customers per day, which represents its largest customer acquisition month on record.
A final positive in the business update was news that it has signed up ecommerce giant eBay Australia to its platform. At present eBay Australia is the largest shopping site in the country with 11-million unique monthly visitors.
AUSTRAC audit.
The results of Afterpay's AUSTRAC audit also went down well with the market.
Although the auditor found historical breaches of the AML/CTF act, this was due to the company being given the wrong legal advice in the past. These issues have since been addressed.
And while six recommendations were made by the auditor, none appear onerous or disruptive to its business operations. One recommendation even encouraged Afterpay to engage AUSTRAC regarding its buy-now pay-later service being formally designated as low ML/TF risk in the AML/CTF Rules.
Should you invest?
Whilst Afterpay's shares are certainly a high risk option, if your risk profile allows, I would be a buyer of its shares.
I think it has enormous growth potential and could provide strong long-term returns for investors along with fellow tech stars Altium Limited (ASX: ALU) and Appen Ltd (ASX: APX).
