Fair enough and things do appear brighter now than a couple of...

Fair enough and things do appear brighter now than a couple of years ago.

My perspective is that Zip has benefited significantly from a dramatic change in investor sentiment - much more so than an improvement in business quality and/or reduction in business risk (apart from the obvious balance sheet benefit of the capital raise).

This change in investor sentiment has primarily occurred due to the rapid US growth. However, this has been in the context of minimal growth in active users or merchants. This cohort of active users are now becoming stretched and true bad debts are rising much faster than revenue.

It’s an unfavourable time in the economic cycle to have increased lending so rapidly to a cohort of users (borrowers) at an elevated risk of losing employment.

As Howard Marks likes to say: “The worst of loans are made in the best of times.”