AFRM
SHOP
New deal, same hustle
Affirm showed up to its Investor Day with a very un-Affirm-like vibe: less “can we survive this macro environment?” and more “watch us scale this thing.” Management laid out a long-term plan built around new products, international expansion, and broader adoption of its consumer finance platform.
The headline number is the one traders will keep circling in red marker: Affirm is still targeting $100 billion in annual gross merchandise volume over the medium term, which BofA models out to around fiscal 2029. That’s a giant cart to push, and it implies growth north of 25% a year. Not exactly a sleepy little fintech update.
Why investors care
The company’s roadmap isn’t just about top-line bragging rights. Affirm also tightened up its RLTC loss-rate framework to 3.75% to 4.0% of GMV, while projecting revenue of 7.5% to 8.5% of GMV and GAAP operating margins of 20% to 25%.
In plain English: the company wants to grow like crazy, but also prove it can make the economics less messy than a teenager’s first credit card bill. The catch is that stronger margins could be partly offset by a higher tax rate, which is why the earnings math still lands roughly in the $3 to $4 per share neighborhood.
The Shopify and global angle
Affirm also leaned hard into the stuff that could make it more than a BNPL button at checkout:
- The Affirm Card, which management thinks could eventually scale to $150 billion in GMV
- Digital wallets and agentic commerce, because apparently even shopping now needs AI to hold its hand
- International expansion, with plans to push into Australia, the Netherlands, Germany and France
The Shopify partnership is still a key piece of the puzzle, with about $20 billion in GMV generated so far. That gives Affirm a real lane into merchant checkout flows instead of relying only on consumers remembering it exists.
Big picture
The stock dropped even as the story got bigger, which is kind of the modern market in one sentence: tell Wall Street you’re aiming for the moon, and it immediately asks about margins, taxes, and whether the rocket is already priced in. Still, if Affirm can keep scaling the platform while tightening losses, the company may start looking less like a BNPL one-trick pony and more like a broader payments network in disguise.