The Afterpay Ltd (ASX: APT) share price is out of form on Wednesday and sinking lower.
At the time of writing, the payments company's shares are down 3.5% to $106.91.
This latest decline means the Afterpay share price is now down 33% from its 52-week high.
Image source: Getty Images
Why is the Afterpay share price sinking today?
Investors have been selling Afterpay's shares due to weakness in the tech sector on Wednesday. This has been driven by a very poor night of trade on the tech-focused Nasdaq index overnight.
According to CNBC, there are a number of potential reasons for the weakness in tech stocks. This includes fears about rising inflation, concerns the US Federal Reserve may have to taper monetary stimulus earlier than anticipated, and speculation that corporate tax rates will increase.
Whatever the reason, the concerns have spread to the Australian share market and have sent the S&P/ASX All Technology Index (ASX: XTX) down 1.5% this afternoon. This compares to a 0.5% gain by the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO).
Afterpay presentation
Not even the release of a presentation ahead of its appearance at the Macquarie Group Ltd (ASX: MQG) conference has been able to support the Afterpay share price.
While the presentation didn't include any new sales data, it did highlight a number of positives.
One of those was its strong performance during the third quarter. For the three months ended 31 March, Afterpay reported a 104% increase in underlying sales to $5.2 billion. This was driven by increases of 211% and 277% in the United States and United Kingdom, respectively.
At the end of the period there were 14.6 million active customers globally, which was up 75% since the same time last year.
What else?
Afterpay also highlighted the quality of its customer base and the benefits of its platform for consumers.
Management notes that contrary to popular opinion, Afterpay customers in Australia have lower personal liabilities than non-Afterpay customers.
It explained: "This is not the result of demographic differences. A like-for-like comparison with a matched group (i.e. similar age, gender and income as Afterpay customers) shows that Afterpay customers have lower personal liabilities than similar people who do not use Afterpay. Afterpay customers also save more and have higher incomes."
As for the benefits that consumers get from using Afterpay, chief among them is credit card fee savings. The company estimates that Afterpay saves customers the equivalent of $110 million in credit card fees each year.
Unfortunately, though, despite how positive the presentation was, it hasn't been enough to prop up the Afterpay share price today.
