Pushpay Holdings shares rose 3.7 per cent to $1.96 after the mobile payments app developer announced record revenue growth in the first quarter and affirmed its full-year guidance.
The company said annualised committed monthly revenue (ACMR) grew US$8.3 million in the March quarter to a record US$50.5m, up 19.4 per cent from three months earlier and a jump from the US$19.6m it recorded in the first quarter last year. Its average revenue per customer (ARPC) jumped 44 per cent from a year earlier to US$625 per month, amounting to a 9.1 per cent gain from the fourth quarter of 2016.
Pushpay said its customer base jumped 78.9 per cent to 6,737 in the 12 months ended March 31, driven by demand from American churches. It said 10 of the top 20 and 36 of the top 100 largest churches in the US use Pushpay. Church clients include the largest church in the US, which has over 39,000 average weekly attendees. As of March 31, 97 per cent of its customers were in North America, including both the US and Canada. The remainder were in Australia and New Zealand. Its staff headcount rose 74.9 per cent over the year to March 31 to 376. Of those, 275 are based in the US.
The app developer is targeting US churches with technology that makes it easy for congregations to make donations using their mobile phones and is expanding its mobile payment app to help people pay utility bills.
In November, it announced its acquisition of church app business from Bluebridge Digital for US$3.1m, a move which increased its potential annual revenue 47 per cent to US$2.2 billion, based on the US$119.3b given to churches in the US in 2015.
