Freelancer Ltd. (ASX: FLN), which operates the Freelancer.com online staffing platform, reported Monday that gross payment volume rose 39.0% in the first quarter to USD 192.9 million, a record for the company.

Meanwhile, group net cash receipts also reached a record, rising 32.1% year over year to USD 12.0 million.

Freelancer is based in Sydney and operates globally. Approximately 72% of group revenue is in US dollars and 4% is in Australian dollars. The company trades on the ASX in Australia and in the first quarter also began trading in the US on the OTCQX Best Markets under the ticker symbol FLNCF. It also operates the Escrow.com platform aimed at facilitating the buying and selling of items online.

Looking at just the Freelancer.com online staffing marketplace, gross marketplace volume (payment to freelancers) rose during the first quarter at its fastest pace since the company’s IPO. It was up 23.6% year over year to USD 25.9 million. The increase came as web traffic at Freelancer.com rose 105.7% year over year to 16.4 million users.

The company noted Freelancer.com reached 51.4 million users as of 8 April 2021. In addition, Freelancer.com’s cash receipts were up 31.4% year over year to USD 10.1 million.

Average completed project size on Freelancer.com had climbed to USD 187. It had fallen to USD 161 from USD 216 in the first half of 2020 amid a spike in new demand; the company had forecast the average amount of completed project size would rise again over time.

Freelancer.com also reported more than 14.5 million contest entries are now being submitted each year. In the first quarter, contest entries rose 52% year over year to 3.82 million. Users submitting entries rose 19%. Fees for contests, however, fell 14.8% year over year in the first quarter. “This is primarily due to a number of items that dropped off moving to the new web stack interface (e.g. upgrades are hidden away) and are currently being tasked by the contest product team to fix,” according to the company. “Similar to how we have rectified hourly projects, we are confident the team will get this fee line moving substantially faster in the next quarter. Between these changes and a number of high-profile engagements, we expect to see significant growth from the contest platform.”

Enterprise gross marketplace volume on Freelancer.com rose 83.4% year over year in US dollars in the first quarter. The company noted that two large clients that spent six figures on the platform in the last four months were not clients in September last year.

Among enterprise contract wins, the company noted Freelancer.com signed a USD 400,000 gross marketplace value agreement to help a large IT company better manage its contingent workforce.

Share price and market cap

Shares in Freelancer.com set a new 52-week high on Monday on the ASX when they reached AUD 0.77 (USD 0.60), the price at which they closed; shares were up 15.79% for the day, according to FT.com. The company had a market cap of AUD 300.5 million (USD232.3 million).