Pushpay first-half loss widens as revenue more than triples

Pushpay provides mobile commerce tools that help make payments easy between consumers and merchants.

Pushpay Holdings, the mobile payments app developer, widened its first-half loss while revenue more than tripled, as the company ramped up spending on product development and sales in a bid to attract US churches to its system.

The Auckland-domiciled, Redmond, US-headquartered company posted a net loss of $6.1 million, or 12 cents per share, in the 6 months ended Sept. 30, from $2.6 million, or 7cps, a year earlier, it said in a statement. Revenue jumped 290 percent to $6.3 million, while expenses rose 176 percent to $12.4 million.

Pushpay spent $2.5 million on product development and maintenance, a 360 percent increase, and $7.9 million on direct costs, sales and marketing, an increase of 296 percent, while more than doubling its staff to 143, largely in sales-related roles.

"Our clear growth strategy - investment in product, processes and people - combined with the large under-serviced target market of the USA Faith Sector has driven our hyper-growth," chief executive Chris Heaslip said. "With further development of our direct sales, referrals strategy and through existing relationships with our strategic channel partners and other distribution partners, we are confident of meeting our targets."

Pushpay provides mobile commerce tools that help make payments easy between consumers and merchants and is geared to mobile charitable giving. It's targeting the US faith sector for growth, where there are more than 314,000 churches with an average 500 attendees each, along with non-profit organisations and enterprises.

In October, Pushpay said its total annualised committed monthly revenue - that is, total billings through merchants that Pushpay then collects fees from - rose to $18 million as at Sept. 30, from $9.2 million as at March 31 and the company says it's confident it will reach its target of $28 million in the year to March 31, 2016. The number of merchants using the app increased 111 percent to 2,102, beating its 2,000 target.

Some 93 percent of Pushpay's merchant clients are located in North America, with 7 percent across Australasia. Average revenue per merchant declined to US$361 at the end of September, from US$367 six months earlier, reflecting lower summer giving patterns, the company said. Pushpay said processing volumes are typically lower over the summer months in the US and it expects average revenue per merchant to increase at the end of the calendar year, during merchants' seasonal peak.

The shares rose 0.4 percent to $7.83, and have risen 234 percent in the past 12 months.