Fintech Firm Block's Shares Soar 20% With Strong Revenue

Block, a financial tech firm that specializes in payment processing, saw its shares soar almost 20% Friday on the Nasdaq due to strong revenue results.

The company, which owns financial technology businesses such as Square and Cash App, was trading at $81.45 per share at 12.42 p.m. EDT (1742GMT) for a daily gain of 19.8% after closing Thursday at $67.96 a share.

The market value of the firm was standing just above $50 billion at the time.

It posted net revenue of $5.77 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023, up 24% from the same period of the previous year, according to its financial results statement released Thursday after market closing. For the full year of 2023, total net revenue was $21.92 billion, up 25% year-on-year.

"Gross profit was $2.03 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023, up 22% year over year. For the full year of 2023, gross profit was $7.50 billion, up 25% year over year," said the statement.

Block, formerly known as Square, was launched in 2009 by Jack Dorsey, who co-founded Twitter in 2006 but resigned from his CEO role in late 2021.

Square is a financial services platform that enables the use of smartphones and tablets to process credit card payments for small and medium-size businesses, and it also provides services in e-commerce, payroll and banking. It processed payments worth over $209 billion in 2023, while it has around four million merchant clients.

Cash App is a mobile payment service that allows users to transfer money to one another using a smartphone app in the US and UK. It recorded 56 million monthly transacting users in December with inflows of $63 billion in the fourth quarter and $248 billion for the full year, according to the statement. -