The Quickfee Ltd (ASX: QFE) share price has had another challenging trading session, falling 8%. Shareholders have been selling down the financial technology company's shares following the release of its Q3 FY21 business update.
As a result of the selloff, the Quickfee share price closed at 31 cents per share. Let's take a look at what was influencing the price action today.
Competing narratives
Despite some impressive growth metrics from the third quarter for Quickfee, they aren't consistent across all operations. The company tends to separate its operations into Australia and United States. From here, we can see two different stories being played out.
For the 9 months year to date, Quickfee reported 509 active merchants using the US platform. This compares to 327 for the same period in FY20. Meanwhile, active merchants shrank from 473 to 461 in Australia in the same comparison.
Similarly, active customers in the US increased to 126,000 from 91,000, while Australian active customers retraced to 24,000 from 30,000. Quickfee attributes this to the government stimulus measures in Australia, reducing the demand for lending locally. Evidently, this impact has flowed onto the Quickfee share price.
However, the company noted March was the strongest lending month thus far for this financial year – hinting at a potential recovery.
Instalment offering and e-invoicing
Quickfee also updated shareholders on its progress with its instalments offering. The company is continuing to gain traction in Australia and the US. 531 merchants had signed up for the product by 31 March 2021. Once again, the US beat out Australia on metric – with 69.7% of those signed up from the US.
Furthermore, lending volumes for the instalment product remain nascent as the company executes its go-to-market strategy. Quickfee's approach is to continue targeting its focused customer base of accounting and law customers.
Lastly, plans are on track for the launch of ConnectAR by the end of Q4 FY21. ConnectAR is an e-invoicing tool that Quickfee expects will assist in cementing its relationship with customers.
Quickfee share price quickly
The Quickfee share price has been caught in a persistent downtrend since August last year. Since then, the share price has gradually eroded 60%.
However, in terms of returns for the last year – things aren't as bad. Bouncing back from the COVID-19 suppression, the Quickfee share price has returned nearly 35% in the past year.
