Affirm Holdings Stock Jumps On JMP Securities Upgrade, WooCommerce Tie-Up Expansion: Retail Sentiment Soars

Buy-now-pay-later service provider Affirm Holdings Inc (AFRM) shares rose by over 5% on Friday after JMP Securities upgraded the stock and WooCommerce designated the firm as a leading pay-over-time provider.

According to The Fly, JMP Securities analyst David Scharf upgraded Affirm to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Market Perform’ with a $78 price target.

The brokerage believes Affirm is a "long-term secular winner" at the expense of the credit card industry and that the company is well positioned to capitalize on the continued adoption of buy now, pay later solutions for everyday purchases.

The company also gains from a "more robust" loan platform compared to its competitors, the brokerage added.

Meanwhile, WooCommerce, a flexible, open-source e-commerce solution built on WordPress, selected Affirm as a leading pay-over-time provider.

Merchants using WooCommerce’s integrated payment solution, WooPayments, can instantly offer Affirm’s customized pay-over-time plans to their customers at checkout.

Following the developments, retail sentiment on Stocktwits jumped into the ‘extremely bullish’ territory (76/100) from ‘bullish’ a day ago. 

AFRM’s Sentiment Meter and Message Volume as of 11:41 a.m. ET on Dec. 20, 2024 | Source: Stocktwits

Most retail chatter on Stocktwits indicated a positive take on the stock.

Affirm was in the news recently after the company announced the pricing of its $800 million upsized offering of convertible senior notes maturing in 2029. The size of the offering was increased from the previously announced $750 million in aggregate principal amount, the firm said.

The initial conversion rate of the notes will be 9.8992 shares of the company’s Class A common stock per $1,000 principal amount of notes.

The company expects to use the net proceeds and cash on hand to repurchase approximately $960 million of the aggregate principal amount of its 0% convertible senior notes due 2026 for $892.8 million of cash.

Meanwhile, shares of Affirm have gained over 42% since the beginning of the year, significantly outperforming the benchmark U.S. indices.

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