Affirm Beats Earnings Estimates but Shares Fall as Late Loans Rise

Affirm shares fell in extended trading on Thursday, November 5, 2026, after the buy now, pay later company reported quarterly earnings and revenue that beat Wall Street estimates. Investors sold the stock anyway, pointing to consumer credit quality that got worse during the quarter and to merchandise volume growth that fell short of the most hopeful forecasts.

Results beat estimates

Affirm reported fiscal first quarter earnings of 47 cents per share, up 104 percent from a year earlier. Analysts polled by FactSet had expected 38 cents per share, according to Investor's Business Daily. Revenue climbed 35 percent to 1.262 billion dollars, ahead of estimates of 1.213 billion dollars.

Gross merchandise volume, the total value of transactions run through the Affirm platform, rose 34 percent to 14.4 billion dollars, against estimates of 14 billion dollars. The figure also cleared the top of the range Affirm itself set on August 27, 2026, when the company guided fiscal first quarter merchandise volume to between 13.7 billion and 14.0 billion dollars after its fourth quarter report.

StockStory reported the same headline numbers in similar terms. It put revenue at 1.26 billion dollars against a consensus estimate of 1.21 billion dollars, a beat of about 4 percent, and earnings of 47 cents per share against a consensus of 38 cents.

Credit quality moves the stock

The weak point sat in the loan book. Consumer credit quality deteriorated during the October ended quarter, Investor's Business Daily reported, as loans more than 30 days late rose by 35 basis points from the prior quarter to 2.9 percent.

Dow Jones Newswires, in a stocks to watch summary published by Morningstar, put the market reaction in one line: merchandise volume rose, but by a lower percentage than some optimistic investors had hoped, and the shares declined 8 percent to 63.62 dollars in the after hours summary it filed at 7:01 p.m. Eastern. Investor's Business Daily measured a drop of more than 9 percent to 63.10 dollars in extended trading. StockStory measured a plunge of 10.4 percent to 62.25 dollars immediately after the results. The three readings were taken at different points in the same extended session.

The stock had already fallen about 8 percent in Thursday's regular session, when technology and artificial intelligence names sold off hard and the Nasdaq Composite lost 5.5 percent. Affirm had also retreated about 5 percent so far in 2026 before Thursday, Investor's Business Daily said.

Guidance for the next quarter

Affirm guided revenue for the next quarter to 1.45 billion dollars at the midpoint, above the analyst consensus of 1.43 billion dollars, according to StockStory. That guidance points to revenue growth of about 29 percent from a year earlier.

The October quarter is usually a seasonally weak one for Affirm, Investor's Business Daily noted, which made the top line beat harder to dismiss. The question investors carried out of the report was the credit line, not the sales line. A lender that lets shoppers split purchases into instalments makes its money only if those shoppers keep paying, and a 35 basis point rise in late loans in one quarter gives the market a clear reason to mark the shares down even on a beat.

Sources: Investor's Business Daily, StockStory via The Sun Chronicle, Morningstar / Dow Jones Newswires