Block reports surprisingly strong earnings and forecasts

Block?reported?earnings after the bell yesterday and it was a strong report with solid revenue growth in both Cash App and Square.

Revenue for the fourth quarter was above expectations at $5.77 billion and gross profit was $2.03 billion, up 22% from a year ago.?

In his shareholder letter (PDF here) CEO Jack Dorsey focused a lot on Cash App. There are currently two million people receiving their pay into their Cash App account, a small subset of the 56 million monthly active users. He wants to grow that number significantly.

He also talked about headcount staying below their self-imposed cap of 12,000 people and they will stay under that cap “until we feel it’s holding us back.”

Dorsey also indicated that integrating Afterpay more tightly with Cash App would be a priority in 2024.

Block’s share price was up 18% in morning trading on Friday.

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