Doug Goodwille from Kayne Anderson speaks to Drew Meredith from The Inside Network on market thinkers.
While a surging gold price is on hold as the world adjusts to a Trump presidency, all the factors that saw its price rise more than 50 per during his first term in office – trade disputes, fiscal deficits and geopolitical tensions – are almost certainly guaranteed the second time around.
Raiz smashes $1bn, Asia growth continues
Australia’s leading micro-investing app, Raiz (ASX:RZI), posted its 3Q financials late last week, and they came in largely as expected. The platform has burst through the $1 billion funds under management (FUM) level, recording a rise of 46.7 percent year on year to $1.02 billion at the end of the quarter. Some of the highlights from the results include:
- Total normalised revenue for the Raiz platform up 43.4% on a year-on-year (YOY) basis to $4.4 million in the March 2022 quarter (Q3 FY22)
- Global Active Customers up 49.6% YOY to 627,821
- Australian funds under management (FUM) up 46.7% YOY to $1.019 billion at the end of Q3 FY22
- Superannuation FUM up 108.0% YOY to $192.4 million
- Active customers in Raiz’s Indonesian business pass 230,000, up 129.4% YOY
- Active customers in Malaysia comfortably exceed100,000, up 89.2% YOY.
- Raiz’s Annual Recurring Revenue (run rate) up 54.1% YOY to $14.7 million
- Cash equivalents and term deposits totalling $18.7 million
Raiz (formerly known as Acorns) uses its micro-investing concept to invest ‘spare change’ from a customer’s daily purchases into diversified portfolios.
The FUM figure on a quarterly basis was down 1.5% on a previous period. The platform attributes this to stock market volatility as the S&P/ASX 200 was down about 6.4 percent in January 2022. Towards the latter part of the quarter, share markets staged a recovery rally which has Raiz’s FUM in upward trajectory.
Raiz’s outlook?
The company is actively building-out its presence in Southeast Asia and is building scale at a rapid rate. In the first three months of the year, active customers in Indonesia grew by 129.4% to 230,824 YOY and 11.7% QOQ in Q3 FY22. Active customers in Malaysia rose by 89.2% YOY and 7.6% QOQ to 104,436.
The uptake has been pleasing especially given the geopolitical events currently taking place around the world and rising inflation fears that would usually see investors stay well away from share markets. Raiz says its next goal is the launch in Thailand.
Raiz CEO George Lucas said: “We were pleased with Raiz’s performance over its Q3 FY22, particularly in the context of geo-political uncertainties, weather, the pandemic and increases in cost-of-living expenses. Just as the drag on sentiment caused by the pandemic started to wane, it was replaced by another bout of geopolitical concerns, notably the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Other layers of uncertainty have been created by the increase in cost-of-living expenses coupled with rising expectations of higher interest rates in Australia and major overseas countries. It was good to see Raiz group FUM remaining comfortably above the $1 billion mark by the end of Q3 FY22.”
