360 Finance Sees Stock Jump 9% on Soaring Revenue, Income
360 Finance reported strong revenue and quadrupled net income for the first quarter, sending its stock higher intraday.
The stock of 360 Finance Inc. (Nasdaq: QFIN) soared nearly 9 percent intraday Tuesday, at $17.85 per share, after the company posted strong results for the first quarter.
The Shanghai-based company, backed by Qihoo 360 Technology Co. Ltd., reported after markets closed Monday that its revenue for the quarter ended March 31 reached $299 million, up 235 percent from a year earlier.
The consumer financing firm said the increase in loan facilitation service fees and post origination service fees were the two primary generators, along with the loan origination volume. The loan origination volume reached 41 billion yuan, or $6 billion, up 179 percent, while the loan facilitation service fees reached $201.8 million, up 248 percent year-over-year.
Net income reached $107.3 million, or 36 cents per fully diluted American depositary share, at an increase of 340 percent from the same period of 2018.
"During the quarter, we attracted a record 3.5 million new users with approved credit lines, which helped to advance our vision of promoting financial inclusiveness for households with borrowing needs across China," Jun Xu, the chief executive officer of 360 Finance, said in the statement.
"Given the attractive return-on-investment profiles of our borrowers, we decided to further invest in customer acquisition by increasing sales and marketing expenses in order to bolster our position in the market and ensure continued growth over the long-term," Jiang Wu, the chief financial officer of 360 Finance, added.
360 Finance reported it has received approval to list 10 billion yuan of asset backed securities on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange. "It should help reduce the funding cost over time," Xu said in the statement.
"As a FinTech company, we need a brand name to win the trust of financial institutions, partners and consumers," Wu said in an interview with CapitalWatch on the company's debut day on Wall Street, when 360 Finance raised $51 million by selling 3.1 million American depositary shares late last year.
Looking ahead, 360 Finance said it expects to generate net revenue for the full year 2019 in the range of 8 billion yuan to 8.5 billion yuan.
