Afterpay leads buy-now-pay-later declines, falls most in nearly 2 months

Asia Pacific Telecom Co

07/01/2021 04:26

** Afterpay  APT.AX  falls by its most since Nov. 10,
leading declines among its buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) peers
    ** APT slides as much as 7.5% to A$105.03 as investors dump
sectors that fared better during the pandemic last year, such as
healthcare, gold and wider tech stocks, and move into miners
 .AX 
    ** Broader market  .AXJO  up 1.9%, its biggest intraday pct
gain since Nov. 10, as well 
    ** Smaller BNPL rivals Zip Co Ltd  Z1P.AX  and Sezzle Inc
 SZL.AX  drop 2.2% and 4.5%, respectively
    ** About 1.2% of APT shares held in short positions, or 3.3
mln shares - ASIC data
    ** The cost to borrow APT shares has risen in 2021, up to
1.08% as of Tuesday, compared with 0.8% at the end of 2020 - FIS
Astec Analytics 
    ** APT has lost ~A$3.70 bln ($2.88 bln) in value so far this
year, falling ~11% 
    
($1 = 1.2825 Australian dollars)

 (Reporting by Nikhil Kurian Nainan)
 ((NikhilKurian.Nainan@thomsonreuters.com; Twitter:
@NikhilKurianN))