Buy now pay later company Sezzle announced plans last week to list its shares on the Nasdaq Global Market.
The US company was listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in July 2019, when it raised A$43.6 million with an issue of CHESS depository interests.
The company said the CDIs would continue to trade on the ASX and it would remove restrictions imposed on trading in the CDIs by US investors.
The company’s stock will be restructured to meet the minimum US$4 bid price required for initial listing on the Nasdaq Global Market. The CDIs closed at 52 cents on Friday, although they have traded as high as 75 cents over the past six months.
Sezzle chair and chief executive Charlie Youakim said in a statement that the company was not seeking to raise capital as part of the Nasdaq listing but hoped to benefit from expanding its universe of investors.
The company’s focus over the past year has been on cutting costs. It cut its merchant numbers by 10 per cent and its customer numbers by 13 per cent last year in a shift from growth at all costs to a focus on profitable business.
Personnel costs were cut 9.9 per cent to US$51.2 million. Technology and marketing costs were up.
One effect of all the cutting was that underlying merchant sales fell 3.6 per cent to US$1.7 billion. But thanks to increased merchant processing and third-party fees, income rose 9.7 per cent to US$125.6 million.
Sezzle introduced a premium service, offering customers access to “premium merchants” and reward points for a monthly fee.
The loss for the year was US$38.1 million, compared with a loss of US$75.2 million in 2021.