Jack Dorsey’s company with disappointing fourth quarter

On the evening of yesterday, February 23, Block (formerly Square) released the Numbers for the 4th quarter and sparked mixed feelings on Wall Street. The main disappointment was earnings per share. Experts reckoned with 30 cents in advance, but in the end the balance sheet only showed 22 cents. But Block surprised at the gross profit. It was $1.66 billion in Q4, up 40 percent from last year. The bottom line, however, was a loss of 114 million US dollars.

Total revenue for Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s payments company came in at $4.65 billion, just slightly above analysts’ expectations. For the full year, sales actually fell by 1 percent compared to 2021 to $17.52 billion. A decline in Bitcoin sales is responsible for the deficit, Block explains. If you exclude the sales, the result is suddenly a 36 percent increase in sales.

The fact that Bitcoin is a main driver for the loss in sales is not surprising given the downturn in 2022. Almost 65 percent went down for the key cryptocurrency.

Cash App loses 25 percent profit

A similar picture emerges for Cash App, one of Block’s main sources of revenue. The payments service’s gross profit for the fourth quarter was $35 million, down 25 percent from the same period last year. For the full year, the loss was even higher, at 28 percent ($156 million).

The app introduced a number of crypto features over the past year. Not only can users buy Bitcoin, they can also transfer it at lightning speed thanks to a connection to the Lightning network. The payment service has a total of almost 40 million users. However, the app is not yet available in Europe.