The capital raising by the buy now, pay later service will comprise of an institutional placement worth $650 million and another $150 million through a share purchase plan for retail shareholders.

The institutional placement will have a floor price of $61.75, a 9.2 per cent discount to Monday’s closing price. The final pricing will be determined in the bookbuild.

Afterpay shares last week hit a record high of $70 each, and on Monday closed at $68 each.

Shares in the company have been placed in a trading halt pending the completion of the institutional sale.

“Given the ongoing impacts from COVID-19 and the uncertain global economic conditions, we have continued to focus on preserving capital and maintaining a strong balance sheet,” Chief Executive Anthony Eisen said in a statement.

Afterpay’s co-founders, Eisen and Nicholas Molnar, will simultaneously sell 2.05 million shares each, representing 10 per cent of their respective holdings in the company.

The two co-founders will remain Afterpay’s largest shareholders holding about 18.4 million shares each.

The company also outlined its trading performance, with underlying sales of $3.8 billion in in the June quarter, a jump of 127 per cent from a year ago.

The company said this was its highest quarterly performance ever, and reflected the accelerating shift to e-commerce spending since the impacts of COVID-19 emerged globally.

That has lifted underlying sales for the full year to $11.1 billion, more than double from FY19.

The company had 9.9 million active customers at the end of FY20, including 5.6 million in the US and 1.0 million in the UK.

-AAP