The Freelancer Ltd (ASX: FLN) share price will be on watch today after it released its 2020 fourth quarter update.
Freelancer says that it’s the world’s largest freelancing and crowdsourcing marketplace by total number of users and projects posted. It also owns Escrow.com, a major provider of secure online payments and online transaction management. It also owns Freightlancer, a global enterprise freight marketplace.
Freelancer’s December update
Freelancer announced that in the fourth quarter of 2020, the company saw gross payment volume (GPV) of US$191.8 million which was up 47.5% on the prior corresponding period.
In the fourth quarter of 2020, web traffic to Freelancer.com grew 46.8% year on year, with direct traffic up 92.3%.
Freelancer gross merchandise value (GMV) was the second highest on record, after the third quarter of 2020, at US$25.9 million (up 20% compared to the prior corresponding period). In Australian dollar terms it was up 12.3% to A$35.5 million.
The Escrow GPV hit an all time record of US$156.6 million, up 56.9% on the prior corresponding period. It was also an all-time record in Australian dollar terms of A$213.6 million. Excluding China, the Escrow GPV went up by 62.6% to US$149.8 million.
In terms of net cash receipts, it said it received A$14.3 million for the fourth quarter of 2020, down 0.9% on the prior corresponding period. Freelancer said that adjusted for $1.1 million in overdue funds received in early January 2021 for engineering services delivered in the fourth quarter of 2020 and StartCon not running, total receipts would have been up 13.1% in US dollars.
Escrow’s cash receipts were US$1.73 million, up 46.5% on the prior corresponding period. Freelancer cash receipts of US$8.7 million were up 0.4%.
For the quarter, it had positive net operating cash flow of $0.1 million for the quarter, though that was down from $7.9 million in the prior year.
The company said that Freelancer and Escrow were profitable during the fourth quarter and second half of 2020.
Summary thoughts
Freelancer is an interesting business and it has the kind of global potential to be a solid business. It keeps hitting roadblocks and it hasn’t managed to kick on to good profitability. It could be one to watch for that profitability inflection point though.
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