The S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) managed to slightly rise by 0.06% today to 6,418 points.

Australia continues to do well with the coronavirus, though it’s not eliminated from every state yet.

Afterpay Ltd (ASX: APT) share price continues to soar, helping the ASX 200 rise

The buy now, pay later sector continues to perform strongly.

The ASX 200 instalment payment company saw its share price rise another 7.5% to $54.50. The market is becoming even more confident on the company’s future despite the ongoing wider coronavirus issues.

Afterpay wasn’t the only one to rise in the sector. The Zip Co Ltd (ASX: Z1P) share price went up 3.4% and the Sezzle Inc (ASX: SZL) share price went up 7.5%.

Christmas in June for shareholders of Harvey Norman Holdings Limited (ASX: HVN) investors

The Harvey Norman share price rose by 7.3% today after the company made two announcements.

Firstly, the ASX 200 retailer revealed a retail trading update. Australian franchisee total sales are up 17.5% in the FY20 second half to 31 May 2020.

Looking at the company-operated stores overseas sales in this half-year to date in Australian dollar terms, Northern Ireland and Singapore suffered sales declines of 38.2% and 21.7% respectively. New Zealand sales were down 7.3% and Slovenia and Croatia sales were down by 5.5%. Malaysia sales were up 1.3% and Ireland sales were up 25.4%.

In the other announcement, Harvey Norman announced a special fully franked dividend of 6 cents per share to be paid on 29 June 2020.  

Kogan.com Ltd (ASX: KGN) capital raising

The ASX 200 ecommerce business has gone into a trading halt to do a capital raising.

Kogan is looking to raise $100 million from institutional investors and another $15 million from regular investors.

The money will be used to fund potential acquisitions that the company may make where Kogan can utilise its efficiencies and digital model. Two recent acquisitions have been Dick Smith and Matt Blatt.

The raising will be done at a share price of $11.45 per share.

More reading

• Why the Afterpay share price just hit a record high and could still go higher
• Latest 3 ASX buy ideas from leading brokers
• How Australian super funds are letting the team down on ethics
• Here are another 2 insanely cheap ASX 200 shares to buy right now
• 2 crazy cheap ASX 200 shares you could still buy

Tristan Harrison has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Australia’s parent company Motley Fool Holdings Inc. owns shares of AFTERPAY T FPO and ZIPCOLTD FPO. The Motley Fool Australia owns shares of and has recommended Kogan.com ltd. The Motley Fool Australia has recommended Sezzle Inc. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Scott Phillips.

The post Afterpay share price up 7%, ASX 200 edges higher appeared first on Motley Fool Australia.

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One investment theme that I think could be well worth gaining exposure to is cloud computing.

Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources such as data storage and computing power without direct active management by the user.

It is because of the cloud that you can watch Netflix on demand wherever you are, do your accounting on the go, and have Zoom meetings with colleagues.

And as you might have noticed, particularly during the pandemic, more and more software and services are going to the cloud.

This shift to the cloud is expected to accelerate in the coming years. So much so, research by Statista shows that the size of the public cloud computing services market is expected to grow from US$227.8 billion in 2019 to US$354.6 billion by 2022. This is an increase of almost 56% in just three years and is unlikely to stop there.

The good news for Australian investors is that there are a couple of quality shares which have direct exposure to the cloud.

I believe this bodes well for their future growth and could make them great long term investments. Here’s why I like them:

Megaport Ltd (ASX: MP1)

The first ASX share you can buy to gain exposure to the cloud computing boom is Megaport. It offers scalable bandwidth for public and private cloud connections, metro ethernet, and data centre backhaul. As of the end of March, Megaport was serving 1,777 customers out of 329 data centres globally. Both its footprint and customer numbers have been growing at a rapid rate over the last couple of years and look likely to continue thanks to the growing cloud usage.

NEXTDC Ltd (ASX: NXT)

Another way to gain exposure to cloud computing is through NEXTDC. It is one of the world’s most innovative data centre operators with a total of 9 centres across 5 capital cities. Its customers are supported by more than 550 partners that form its highly skilled and network-rich partner ecosystem. The company believes this makes it Australia’s only truly channel centric data centre solutions provider, offering complete service neutrality. Demand for capacity within its centres has been growing at a rapid rate over the last few years. I expect this trend to continue and drive strong earnings growth as it scales.

More reading

• Could these sensational ASX shares help you beat the market?
• Are Megaport shares the ones to buy and hold beyond 2030?
• Why I’m not afraid to invest in shares during this recession
• The smartest ASX 200 shares to buy with $2,500 today
• 1 ASX 200 tech share to buy and hold for a decade

James Mickleboro owns shares of NEXTDC Limited. The Motley Fool Australia’s parent company Motley Fool Holdings Inc. owns shares of MEGAPORT FPO. The Motley Fool Australia has recommended MEGAPORT FPO. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Scott Phillips.

The post 2 ASX shares to buy to benefit from the cloud computing boom appeared first on Motley Fool Australia.

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It has been another stellar day for the Afterpay Ltd (ASX: APT) share price.

On Wednesday the payments company’s shares continued their positive run and charged 7.5% higher to end the day at $54.52.

At one point the Afterpay share price was up over 8% to a new record high of $54.85.

Why did the Afterpay share price hit a record high today?

The catalyst for this gain appears to have been a broker note out of Bell Potter.

According to the note, the broker has retained its buy rating and lifted the price target on Afterpay’s shares to a lofty $65.00. This price target implies potential upside of over 19% from today’s close price.

The broker believes that integrating its platform with key ecommerce and payment infrastructure players will be key drivers of underlying sales growth in the future.

It notes that Afterpay is working with both Visa and Mastercard. It also believes there is potential for it to expand its relationship with eBay into the US or UK markets. Afterpay is currently available on eBay’s Australian platform.

In addition to this, Bell Potter sees opportunities for Afterpay and WeChat owner Tencent Holdings to collaborate over the medium term. Given the clout that Tencent has in the Asian market, this could be a very big deal.

And finally, while Afterpay’s shares may trade at a significant premium to the market average, Bell Potter notes that it trades on lower multiples than sector peer Shopify. This is despite it having double the sales growth trajectory of the Canadian ecommerce giant.

Should you invest?

While Afterpay is certainly a high risk option due to the aforementioned premium its shares trade at, I believe it has the potential to more than justify this.

Overall, I think Afterpay can be a giant of the payments industry in the future, which is why I would still buy it with a long term view.

Though, given the risks involved, it might be prudent to restrict an investment to just a small part of a balanced portfolio.

More reading

• Afterpay share price up 7%, ASX 200 edges higher
• 3 ASX shares to buy for the big shift to contactless payments
• Afterpay share price overbought says analyst
• The Sezzle and Pointsbet share prices have hit new, all time highs. Time to invest?
• Why I would buy Afterpay and these exciting ASX tech shares

James Mickleboro has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Australia’s parent company Motley Fool Holdings Inc. owns shares of AFTERPAY T FPO. The Motley Fool Australia has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Scott Phillips.

The post Why the Afterpay share price just hit a record high and could still go higher appeared first on Motley Fool Australia.

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