Jack Dorsey, co-founder and chief executive officer of Twitter Inc. and Square Inc., listens to the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Florida on Friday, June 4, 2021.
Eva Marie Uzcategui | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Block The company’s shares rose 14% in extended trading Thursday after the payments company reported Fourth-quarter earnings beat analysts’ estimates for gross margin and showed strong revenue growth from Square and Cash App.
Here’s how the company fared compared to the LSEG (formerly Refinitiv) analyst consensus:
- Earnings per share: 45 cents adjusted. Not comparable to ratings.
- Income: $5.77 billion vs. expected $5.70 billion
The block reported gross profit of $2.03 billion, up 22% from a year ago. Analysts tend to focus on gross profit as a more accurate measurement of a company’s core transactional business.
The company raised its adjusted EBITDA forecast to at least $2.63 billion from $2.40 billion.
Block, formerly known as Square, ended the year with 56 million monthly active transactions for Cash App in December, with the majority of those customers using it for either peer-to-peer payments or Cash App Cards.
The Cash App division reported gross profit of $1.18 billion, up 25% from last year.
The company, run by Jack Dorsey, said its Cash App Card had 23 million monthly active transactions in December, up 20%. This is more than double the growth rate of total monthly assets.
“We believe this strategy will allow us to build the largest network over the long term with a highly engaged customer base using Cash App as their primary banking solution,” Dorsey said in a note to shareholders.
The payments firm has focused on cutting operations in recent months. In January, Block CEO as reported The note to employees said the company had laid off a “large number” of workers. This followed another round of layoffs in December.