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Jack Dorsey, co-founder and chief executive officer of Twitter Inc. and Square Inc., listens during the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Florida, Friday, June 4, 2021.
Eva Marie Uzcategui | Bloomberg | getty images
block The stock rose as much as 14% in extended trading Thursday after the payments company reported fourth-quarter earnings that beat analyst estimates on gross profit and saw strong growth in its Square and Cash App revenues.
Here’s how the company performed compared to the analyst consensus at LSEG, formerly Refinitiv:
- earnings per share: 45 cents, adjusted. Not comparable to estimates.
- Income: $5.77 billion vs. $5.70 billion expected
The block made $2.03 billion in gross profit, up 22% from a year earlier. Analysts focus on gross profit as a more accurate measure of a company’s main transaction businesses.
The company raised its adjusted EBITDA forecast to at least $2.63 billion from $2.40 billion.
The Block, formerly known as Square, ended the year in December with 56 million monthly transaction activations for Cash App, the majority of which were customers using it for peer-to-peer payments or the Cash App Card. Were.
Its Cash App business reported gross profit of $1.18 billion, a 25% increase year-on-year.
The Jack Dorsey-run company said it had 23 million monthly active people on its Cash App card in December, up 20%. This is more than twice the growth rate of total monthly actives.
“We believe this strategy will enable 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 scaling down operations in recent months. In January, the Block CEO reportedly said in a note to employees that the company had laid off a “large number” of employees. After this, another round of layoffs came in December.