Sezzle vs Afterpay share price: Black Friday sales compared

Afterpay & Sezzle share prices compared

When Afterpay (ASX: APT) revealed the impact Black Friday and the slightly lesser known Cyber Monday (BF/CM) had on underlying sales – the market went slightly ballistic – pushing the fast-growing company’s stock up more than 5% in short-order.

Unsurprisingly then – when Sezzle (ASX: SZL) – an up-and-coming player in the buy now pay later (BNPL) space released their own set of impressive BF/CM sales figures today, its stock also rose, gaining 1.72% by mid-afternoon.

Here, the company reported a string of impressive achievements over the BF/CM period, including:

• Adding 36,000 Active Customers
• And increasing underlying merchant sales by 400% when compared to the year prior – with this metric reaching US$11.3m over four days

The majority of these sales were made on Sezzle’s mobile platform.

Speaking of these this short-term performance, Sezzle’s CEO Charlie Youakim said:

‘The strong Black Friday / Cyber Monday sales have provided a very favourable backdrop for Sezzle’s December Quarter. We enjoyed very robust new customer additions for just four days of sales, and the UMS of US$11.3m during this brief sales frenzy equates to more than 7% of Sezzle’s UMS in the entire last four quarters.’

Commenting on the favourable macro-consumer trends developing in North America, Mr Youakim

‘The decline in the use of credit cards and heavy utilization of mobile phones during the iconic BF/CM sales event provides further compelling evidence of the growing preference by consumers for alternative payment methods such as Sezzle.’

Looking at these favourable macro trends in more depth, it was also pointed out that in regard to online purchases, credit card usage has fallen significantly in the last year – from 66.4% to 54.3%, according to a PYMNTS survey. An understandably favourable headwind, according to Sezzle's CEO.

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Like Sezzle, Afterpay also saw impressive growth across a number of key metrics during the BF/CM period, including:

• Adding 140,000 new customers in just two days,
• And seeing underlying sales soar by A$160m

Though in absolute terms, Afterpay’s metrics from the BF/CM period look to far outshine Sezzle’s, investors should remember that Afterpay is both a significantly larger company than Sezzle, and one which operates in more markets.

For example and on comparative terms, Afterpay is around 18 times larger than Sezzle – when looking at market capitalisation. As it always seemed the case however, there remains enough room in the space for a number of different players to thrive.