Block's stock shoots higher as Square parent boosts its earnings outlook

By Emily Bary

Block also calls out healthy trends across Square and Cash App businesses

Block Inc.'s cost discipline continued to pay off, helping to power the financial-technology company to an earnings beat in the latest quarter.

Also contributing was momentum across the company's two main business areas, the Cash App mobile wallet and the Square merchant business.

On the whole, Block (SQ) raked in $2.09 billion in gross profit during the first quarter, while analysts tracked by FactSet were expecting $2.02 billion. Wall Street looks at gross profit as a top-line proxy for Block's business since the traditional revenue line is skewed by heavy bitcoin contributions, which influence revenue but with minimal margin.

Cash App gross profit was $1.26 billion, up 25% from a year before, while analysts were modeling $1.17 billion. Square gross profit was $820 million, up 19%, and above the FactSet consensus of $805 million.

The stock jumped about 8% in Thursday's extended session.

Within the Cash App business, Chief Financial Officer Amrita Ahuja said the company saw strength across the major metrics that the company tracks. The Cash App had 57 million monthly transacting active users, up 6% from a year before. Inflows per transacting active user rose 11% to $1,255.

Those numbers illustrated "healthy trends that we're seeing across how customers are using our platform," she said.

For Square, Block has been focused on strengthening its product portfolio, notably in the food-and-beverage vertical. The company is also working to simplify onboarding and to reduce the number of apps that merchants need to use.

"We've noted trends around moderating same-store-sales growth for our U.S. customers," Ahuja said. That seems to be "stable and relatively consistent with what we've seen in the past couple of quarters," though Block is "obviously watchful of those broader trends."

Block's overall adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization was $705 million, while analysts were looking for $591 million. That partly reflected "discipline and efficiency across a range of our expenses," Ahuja said.

The company is boosting its full-year outlook and now expects $8.78 billion in gross profit, up from $8.65 billion a year before. The new adjusted Ebitda forecast is for $2.76 billion, up from $2.63 billion before.

Ahuja said that Block's "improved outlook for the full year" takes into account "not only our outperformance in the first quarter, but also our increased expectations for the remainder of the year."

For the second quarter, Block expects $2.165 billion to $2.185 billion in gross profit, while analysts were looking for $2.18 billion. The adjusted Ebitda forecast of $670 million to $690 million compares with the $648 million FactSet consensus.

-Emily Bary

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05-02-24 2026ET

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