- Premium Content It takes our newsroom weeks - if not months - to investigate and produce stories for our premium content. You can’t find them anywhere else.
Miguel Cordon · · 3 min readBillEase reaches $60m in annual revenue, turns profitable
Photo credit: BillEase
BillEase, a buy now, pay later player in the Philippines, is making about US$60 million in annual recurring revenue as of July, doubling from the same period last year, according to a written statement sent to Tech in Asia by CFO John Garret Go.
The company has also returned to the black, with its net profit in 2023 so far exceeding 5x of the figure for 2021, which was US$293,000, Go added.
The CFO attributed the growth to increased spending in customer acquisition last year, although the money it invested into each new customer has remained stable.
BillEase also bolstered its merchant network to over 3,000 from about 500 at the start of 2022.
Having its cake and eating it too
The firm is continuing a growth streak. In 2022, it registered a 4x year-on-year surge in revenue to hit US$30.4 million, according to its financial statement.
About US$21 million of that was attributed to charging borrowers an interest, with the remaining coming from loan processing fees.
“In addition to BNPL, BillEase offers cash loans, e-wallet and mobile load top ups, gaming credits, and bills payment,” Go said. “In total, we disbursed close to 3.5 million loans to over 650,000 individual customers in 2022.”
It wasn’t profitable that year, though, posting a net loss of US$342,000 as administrative and other operating costs grew over 4x.
According to Go, the loss was attributed to share-based payments to employees. “Without this non-cash expense, we would have ended 2022 with a small positive net income,” he explained.
(From left) BillEase co-founders Huyen Nguyen, Georg Steiger, and Ritche Weekun / Photo credit: BillEase
More expected defaults
However, a concern in BillEase’s 2022 financials is the 10x growth in its allowance on expected credit losses, which is an estimate on the amount of debt a company expects it will unlikely recover.
According to Tech in Asia’s calculations, the BNPL firm’s expected credit losses represented about 13.5% of all its loan receivables for last year. In comparison, Sea Group’s SeaMoney registered 13.9% on a similar metric during the second quarter of its 2023 financial year.
Stay ahead in Asia’s tech landscape
This is premium content. Subscribe to read the full story.
In 2022, the Philippines-based BNPL player registered a 4x year-on-year growth in revenue, landing at US$30.4 million.
We know this is not ideal. ⌛ Sign up in 20 seconds. Cancel anytime.
Our subscriber community includes professionals from these companies:
Stay updated on the go with our mobile app.
Get latest insights with smoother, more personalized experience through TIA mobile app.
