Square profit beats on growth in subscription and services business
February 26, 2020
(Reuters) – Square Inc beat market expectation for quarterly profit on Wednesday, as the payments processor earned more from its subscription and services business, especially from Cash App.
The company, founded and led by Twitter Inc Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey and best known for its signature credit card readers that are plugged into smartphones, has been aggressively expanding into a wide range of financial services.
It has been bolstering its mobile payment service Cash App with extra features such as stock trading, which pits it against Robinhood, a rival trading app popular among young consumers. The app also directly competes with PayPal’s Venmo on money transfers.
Cash App had about 24 million monthly active customers in December, surging 60% from last year, the company said.
Subscription and services-based revenue, which includes earnings from Cash App, surged 45% to $281.4 million from last year.
The company posted https://bit.ly/2TjJT1P a profit of $390.9 million in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31 compared with a loss of $28.2 million, a year earlier.
Excluding one-time items, the company earned 23 cents per share, while analysts were expecting 21 cents per share, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Total net revenue rose to $1.31 billion from $932.5 million.
(Reporting by Bharath Manjesh in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)