FinTech IPO Index Plunges 11.7% Amid Broad-Based Market Rout

There was nowhere to run this week for investors seeking to escape a market rout that came on like a tidal wave, crashing down Thursday.  

Tariffs, of course, dominated, and once they were real, as of Wednesday night, the stage was set for a plunge Thursday that’s not been seen in years. Investors fled the digital platforms and the buy now, pay later (BNPL) players — many of them international in scope, and dependent on growth in lending or consumer spending.

And within the FinTech IPO Index, which sank more than 11%, not a single name was in the black.

Oportun’s stock sank more than 14.2%.  

The company said this week that it had closed a new warehouse facility, with a $187.5 million total commitment. The warehouse featured Natixis Corporate and Investment Banking as senior lender and Neuberger Berman, on behalf of client funds, as mezzanine lender. There’s a two-year revolving period in place and the warehouse facility is collateralized by Oportun’s unsecured and secured personal loan originations.

nCino shares gave up more than 30%.

As reported by PYMNTS, guidance anticipates slowing growth in the core cloud banking segments and mortgage markets, though a reacceleration is envisioned for fiscal year 2027.

Management said on the conference call with analysts that first quarter, top-line growth should be in the high single digits year over year, to a range of roughly $139 million to $140.7 million, which would be a slowdown from the 14% growth rate notched in the most recent quarter.

The company also announced the appointment of Sean Desmond as CEO, succeeding Pierre Naudé, who becomes executive chairman. Desmond said on the conference call with analysts that at a high level, “There is no doubt that financial institutions across the globe continue to struggle with inefficiencies caused by legacy infrastructure. Too many of them still rely on fragmented tech stacks and siloed data, making critical processes far too slow and cumbersome” and noted that “while our scale has increased, I don’t believe our execution has kept pace with the full extent of the market opportunity. … Our ability to execute over the past couple of years was significantly impacted by macroeconomic headwinds beyond our control.”

Later in the call he said that customers had paused onboarding decisions; growth also was impacted as “we were also too optimistic in expecting a drop in interest rates to drive an increase in mortgage activity.”

nCino CFO Greg Orenstein said on the call that subscription revenues were up 16% in the fourth quarter; subscription growth should accelerate after the current fiscal year. Though the mortgage business grew in the most recent period by 8%, forward guidance assumes no year-over-year increase in U.S. mortgage subscription revenues.

Affirm’s stock swooned by 17.8%, and the read across here is that a spending slowdown might snare BNPL behemoths.

But in company-specific news noted here, Stride Bank will become a new card issuing partner for the Affirm Card, supporting the growing demand for that payment offering. The collaboration enables Stride Bank to continue expanding its payments programs with FinTech companies and helps Affirm extend its reach to more consumers and merchants, the companies said. The Affirm Card had 1.7 million active cardholders as of Dec. 31.

Katapult’s latest quarterly results detailed that gross originations were $75.2 million, an increase of 11.3%. Total revenue was $63 million, an increase of 9.4%. The company noted that write-offs as a percentage of revenue were 9.6% in the fourth quarter of 2024 and according to the release are within the company’s 8% to 10% long-term target range. Katapult’s stock also was down 30% through the past five trading sessions.

AvidXChange announced several new offerings this past week. In the release, the firm detailed the launch of AI [artificial intelligence] Approval Agent, which lets customers quickly assess how likely an invoice is to be approved by analyzing patterns from past decisions.    

AI PO Matching Agent matches line-item details from invoices to purchase orders.  The company’s release also heralded the expansion of AI capabilities within its Invoice Capture feature, which “continuously learn the unique patterns of the data across invoices, delivering approval-ready invoices that reduce the need for manual touchpoints,” according to the announcement. The stock lost 6.9%. 

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