Affirm Holdings jumped the gun on its quarterly earnings release on Thursday, posting and then quickly deleting a tweet with details about its results while the market was still open. Affirm is a prominent “buy now, pay later” service that lets users complete purchases in installments over time rather than at the time of sale. The financial tech firm’s tweet included an image labeled “FY Q2 2022 Earnings” as well as a link to Affirm’s investor relations site. Shares initially spiked after the tweet surfaced, only to plunge more than 21% as of 3 p.m. ET, roughly two hours after the tweet was posted and deleted. The post claimed the company leveraged “our superior technology” in the quarter, with total transactions jumping 218%, active consumers increasing 150% and revenue spiking 77%. It’s still unclear if those numbers are accurate. “Another great quarter is in the books as we accelerated our growth,” the deleted tweet said, according to screenshots circulating on Twitter. Affirm later confirmed the mistake and released its earnings report early. “Due to human error, a small portion of Affirm’s fiscal Q2 results were inadvertently tweeted from Affirm’s official Twitter account earlier today,” the company said. The company was slated to report second-quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday, with a conference call with analysts to follow at 5 p.m. ET. Twitter users quickly pounced on the apparent mistake, with many calling out Affirm’s social media team for deleting the post. “Nice try @Affirm, but we all saw that deleted tweet,” one user wrote. “Today in lawyers having a bad day: general counsel for Affirm Holdings, after their company’s official account apparently tweeted out (then swiftly deleted) earnings data while the market was still open. Oops,” attorney Max Kennerly said. “THE DELETED AFFIRM TWEET FOR THOSE WHO MISSED IT,” another said alongside a screenshot of the tweet.
