The Novatti Group Ltd (ASX: NOV) share price has rocketed today. Novatti shares closed at 26 cents on Friday and opened at 27 cents a share this morning. But soon after market open, Novatti rocketed as high as 36 cents. At the time of writing, the share price has closed at that high of 36 cents, up 38.46% for the day. That's a big move to be sure. However, it still doesn't lift Novatti to the company's 52-week high of 42 cents a share.
So what's going on here today?
Novatti is a digital payments/fintech company. You might think that some kind of significant announcement from the company might have precipitated this dramatic jump in Novatti shares today. However, there is no major news out of the company today to speak of.
The company's last market-sensitive announcement (a quarterly update) came out on 29 January. Before then, on 22 January, Novatti announced that Apple Pay would now support its prepaid Visa cards. But that's now ancient history by ASX standards.
Something in the BNPL water?
Several companies in the fintech and buy now, pay later (BNPL) spaces have seen similar moves today. Zip Co Ltd (ASX: Z1P) was up a whopping 16.8% today for starters.
And two companies in Douugh Ltd (ASX: DOU) and IOUpay Ltd (ASX: IOU) experienced such sudden and sharp rises that both companies were given 'speeding ticket' please explain notices from the ASX. That came after Douugh shares rose 50% at one point, while IOUpay shares were up close to 100%.
Unfortunately for Novatti, it now joins this club as well. Novatti was slapped with a speeding ticket of its own for today's share price efforts just after lunchtime. Novatti told the ASX in the publically-released letter that it was not aware of any information that could have contributed to today's share price moves.
The company stated the following on what it thinks might be going on:
Novatti notes that the payments and fintech sectors globally have seen significant growth and re-rating by markets, in particular as a result of COVID-19 and the rapid digital transformation of payments and financial services. Novatti's business has continued to grow strongly, as announced in the recent quarterly update which highlighted major business and financial progress…
For now, at least, no one has a better explanation.
