SYDNEY, April 27, 2026, 06:02 AEST
Zip Co Ltd heads into Monday’s ASX session with its on-market buyback still active, after a Friday filing showed the Australian buy-now-pay-later firm bought 25,000 shares in the previous session and had already repurchased 13.8 million shares before that. The ASX cash market’s normal trading phase begins at 09:59:45 Sydney time.
The timing matters because investors are weighing capital returns against a sharper question: whether Zip’s upgraded profit outlook can hold while credit losses stay contained. Zip’s investor page showed the stock at A$2.50 as at April 24, after a volatile stretch around its quarterly update.
The company is also trying to move past February’s selloff, when first-half cash operating earnings missed Visible Alpha estimates and the shares closed 34.4% lower. Marc Jocum, senior product and investment strategist at Global X ETFs, told Reuters at the time that the second-half guidance had signalled a “dramatic deceleration in momentum.” Reuters
Zip said on April 17 it now expects FY26 group cash EBTDA of at least A$260 million. Cash EBTDA, a company measure of operating earnings before tax, depreciation and amortisation, rose 41.5% from a year earlier to A$65.1 million in the March quarter, while total transaction volume — the value of purchases handled through the platform — rose 22.4% to about A$4.0 billion.
Chief Executive Cynthia Scott said Zip had delivered “record cash earnings” and pointed to growth across both markets. The company said operating margin expanded to 19.4% from 16.5% a year earlier, while active customers rose 3.5% to 6.5 million.
The United States did the heavy lifting. U.S. transaction volume rose 43.1% in U.S. dollar terms, revenue climbed 43.3%, active customers grew 9.0% and merchants increased 17.9%, while U.S. net bad debts held at 1.86% of transaction volume. Net bad debts are loans written off, after recoveries, measured against transaction volume.
Australia and New Zealand were steadier, not explosive. ANZ revenue rose 5.0% from a year earlier and transaction volume rose 4.8%, while active customers in the region fell 7.4%, according to Zip’s quarterly update.
The buyback gives management another tool. Zip’s latest notice said the company’s A$50 million on-market program, announced in February, could cover up to 92.2 million shares, with 78.3 million left to buy back after the April 23 purchase. The company paid A$62,000 for the 25,000 shares bought that day.
There was also fresh register paperwork last week. A substantial-holder notice showed State Street Corp and subsidiaries reported voting power of 10.74% in Zip, up from 9.65%; such filings track voting interests and can include securities lending, so they are not a clean read on ordinary buying alone.
Zip competes in a crowded buy-now-pay-later market, where customers split purchases into instalments and providers often earn merchant fees. The field includes Block-owned Afterpay in Australia and Affirm in the United States; Reuters reported last year that Afterpay had more than 3.5 million active monthly users in Australia, about half the country’s BNPL accounts, citing government figures.
The risk is credit. Zip’s group net bad debts rose to 1.93% of transaction volume from 1.64% a year earlier, even as U.S. losses stayed inside management’s target range. If U.S. losses do not fall below 1.75% in the fourth quarter as the company forecast, the guidance upgrade may get less room from investors.
Regulation is another check on the story. Australia’s corporate regulator has said BNPL providers must hold a credit licence from June 10, 2025, under laws that extend the National Credit Code to BNPL contracts. That raises the cost of compliance, even if it may also give the sector a more stable footing.
