The Afterpay Ltd (ASX: APT) share price has finished the trading week with more of a fizzle than a bang.
Afterpay shares slid well into the red in the latter part of the week after the buy now, pay later (BNPL) company reported its FY21 earnings on Wednesday.
At the market close today, the Afterpay share price was trading down 1.71% at $130.16. This was just 0.5% higher than last Friday's closing price.
The main takeaway from the company's FY21 report included a 13% decrease in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) and a statutory after-tax loss of around $160 million.
This was despite a 90% year on year growth in sales revenue and almost 80% gain in total income.
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What did Afterpay's co-CEO say?
Afterpay co-founder/CEO Nick Molnar defended the statutory loss on Bloomberg TV on Wednesday, saying many non-cash items were essentially one-offs. This included the revaluation of the company's minority interest in a UK entity.
Molnar added that it was unsurprising to see a minor slowdown in customer growth in Australia versus other markets, given the company's maturity in the ANZ market in FY21. In contrast, Afterpay saw more than 100% customer growth in its US segment over the past 12 months.
Moreover, he said Afterpay continued to see "top-line" revenue growth as "frequency does continue to accelerate" in the Australian market, in addition to its other segments.
What about the Square Inc deal?
Regarding Square Inc's impending acquisition of Afterpay, Molnar said the focus was to "align values and principles", with Square starting from the same fundamentals as Afterpay.
The BNPL company's top executive said the prospects were "really exciting". This included the ability to "leverage millions of retailers" (Square's sellers) and more than 70 million users on Square's cash app, to accelerate its growth in North America and the globe.
However, Molnar added that Afterpay's push was as much of a marketing play as it was in retail, as the company sent "over a million leads a day" to its retail partners over the last year.
According to Molnar, this differentiated the company as not just a "payments infrastructure" provider. It was also a "marketing engine" to the hard to reach Millennial and Gen Z consumers.
Afterpay share price snapshot
The Afterpay share price has had a choppy year to date, posting a gain of 10% since January 1. Despite this, Afterpay shares have climbed 43% into the green over the last 12 months.
This result has outpaced the S&P/ASX 200 index (ASX: XJO)'s return of around 23% over the last year.
