$1 Club, page-27223

This is the million dollar question (or the $1/sp question) - if/when will the BNPL sector turn around? Some sectors are cyclical but that's usually for commodities, i.e. lithium, oil, iron ore etc. With technology it's much harder to pick. As posted previously my bet is that rising interest rates will continue to dampen appetite for cash-burning growth stocks, which is why we've seen APT taken over and ZIP/SZL in merger talks. I saw in today's news that BOQ has retained Goldman Sachs with a view to buy out HUMM. Others will likely follow. Some won't survive - I think SPT is probably doomed as their business model appears to be directly copied by the big banks, so there's no point of difference any more. That, essentially, is what these BNLP/fintech players need - a clear competitive advantage of some sort. The trouble with being in the lending space is there's very low barriers to entry (just about anyone can lend money - your dodgy local pawnbroker included).

IOU's diversification sets it apart from pure-BNPL peers, but don't forget there are various other stocks operating in the short/mid/longer term lending/fintech space, such as Wisr (WZR), MoneyMe (MME), Harmony (HMY), Plenti (PLT), Latitude (LFS) and so on. Given the IDSB acquisition and the "we're more than BNPL" line often read on these threads, if holders want to dig deeper into peer valuations relative to IOU then looking at how WZR, MME etc are valued verses their loan books is probably a worthwhile idea, perhaps more so than comparing with pure-BNPL peers who chiefly focus on Australia, US and the UK. I used to disagree with the comments from @UniTrader about a faster path to profitability, but given the way the macro is looking, I'm leaning more that way now. The market has already clearly rejected the growth-at-any-cost story (Zip) so profitability it has to be...?