Finance Monthly - January 2022

Affirm Holdings is a financial technology startup that enables consumers to purchase products and make payments in instalments. Investors interest in the company piqued in August when it entered into a partnership with Amazon. In October of this year, Affirm Holdings also partnered with American Airlines, the perfect time given 74% of Americans said they would spend “more on travel this holiday season than ever before”. However, the stock dipped in early November after its largest client, Peloton Interactive, predicted underwhelming figures for the rest of the fiscal year, which deteriorated Peloton shares and agitated Affirm’s investors. Nonetheless, Affirm’s share prices have increased by 210% since its IPO in January. DigitalOcean is a cloud computing service provider, providing infrastructure and tools for developers, startups, and SMBs. Since its IPO in March, shares have increased by 143% and the company’s Q3 revenue in 2021 increased by 37% to £83m, rather impressive given its three main competitors are Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Looking towards the new year, the company is well-positioned to maintain its momentum in increased share price. It is predicted that by 2024 global spending on infrastructure and platform services will total £87bn and DigitalOcean believes that there are currently 100 million SMBs and 19 million developers worldwide that would benefit from their service, meaning it has the capability to expand its customer base exponentially. Finance Monthly. Inve s tmen t 45