Shareholders of Boku Inc (LON:BOKU) have seen their shares in green, following an impressive trading update from the firm on Tuesday.
The firm said that it had performed marginally ahead of forecast across the first two months of 2020, despite the spread of the coronavirus.
The coronavirus has continued to put a bleak sentiment onto global markets and businesses across 2020, however Boku have seem unaffected by the epidemic and have produced some impressive statistics today.
The mobile payments firm said that total payment volumes in January and February had totaled $966 million, which showed a 30% rise on a year on year basis.
Notably, Boku said that this was ‘slightly’ ahead of expectations, and shareholders seem to have reacted optimistically to the update today.
The firm noted that monthly active users are rising each month, as it reported 18.2 million users in February. This figure shows a 36% spike compared to the 2018 figure.
Average total payment volumes per day also rose 2.5% in February, and daily average users grew 4% compared to the January figure.
Jon Prideaux, CEO of Boku, commented: “Naturally we are concerned about the spread of Coronavirus and feel for those people affected. The recent growth we have seen in those countries that are most affected has been higher than in those where the virus has had a more limited impact so far*. This could be correlation rather than causation, but, in general, the more time people spend indoors, the more our platform is utilised. If large numbers of people are forced to self isolate we would predict that, as already seen in China#, this would lead to an increase in the usage of online games and streaming services.
“We look forward to providing further updates at the time of the release of our audited 2019 results at the end of March 2020 and remain confident of meeting market expectations for the current year.”
Boku’s confidence gets rewards
In January, the firm told the market that they expect a rise in annual revenue and earnings.
The firm said that it had largely seen an increase in payments and strong progress made by its identity fraud prevention solution, called Boku Identity.
Boku outlined to shareholders that it expects revenues for 2019 to be in the range of $50.0 million to $50.5 million, up around 42% from $35.3 million reported for 2018.
Group earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation is expected to be in the range of $10.0 million to $10.5 million, up 59% from $6.3 million in 2018.
The total processed value was $5 billion, which showed a steady climb from the $3.6 billion figure reported one year ago.
Interestingly for shareholders, the firm reported a higher number of active users of the Boku platform in December increasing to 17.8 million 4.4 million higher than 2018.
With regards to their Identity division, billable transactions rose 45% to 253 million.
Revenue increased 26% to $6.7 million from $5.3 million in 2018, and losses decreased to $5.0 million versus 2018’s $6.4 million as Boku continued to expand the service outside of the US and the UK to over 60 countries worldwide.
Shares in Boku trade at 63p (+8.97%). 3/3/20 11:48BST.
