Square stock on fire: Jack Dorsey’s beard sets 3 share price records in 3 days
Few stocks have performed better this year than Square
Square stock is now up over 1,800% since its IPO in 2015.
More recently, this week’s 8% jump was solidified by the company’s acquisition of Credit Karma’s tax wing for $50 million, which traders were pretty into.
The move comes as part of Intuit’s $7.1 billion Credit Karma takeover, which until now wasblocked by a civil antitrust lawsuitbrought forward by the US Department of Justice.
Intuit’s TurboTax is a direct competitor of Credit Karma’s tax business, which makes buying it less than sporting ‘cos Intuit could end up with a monopoly—so Square agreed to buy it instead, and integrate Credit Karma’s tax software and IP into its own peer-to-peer money transfer thing, Cash App.
But while Square’s main rival PayPal has also benefitted from a hyper-digitized 2020, PayPal has only just managed to double its share price in the past year.
Still, both stocks are leagues ahead of grandpa payments plays like Visa and Mastercard, which are both up less than 20% since this time in 2019.
All those gains are attributed to Square’shealthy revenue, with quarterly gross profit up 59% year-on-year. The company’s net revenue rose 140% to $3.03 billion, with Bitcoin transactions (Square does that) making up more than half of that.
But even without the BTC, revenue rose 25%.
In fact,Square loves Bitcoinso much it put 1% of its total assets in BTC (around $50 million) in early October, when it traded for under $11,000.
Now it’s worth nearly $17,000, so, there’s that too.
Square’s done a lot of going up, sure, but how far can it go? Boomer question, but ok. Most Wall Street insiders consider it either a buy or a hold,according to MarketWatch.
Story byDavid Canellis
David is a tech journalist who loves old-school adventure games, techno and the Beastie Boys. He’s currently on the finance beat.David is a tech journalist who loves old-school adventure games, techno and the Beastie Boys. He’s currently on the finance beat.
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