Block, Inc. (NYSE:SQ) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Rayna Kumar: Thank you.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Ramsey El-Assal with Barclays.

Ramsey El-Assal: Hi, thanks for taking my questions this evening. I wanted to ask you to dive in a little bit deeper on the move up-market and seller, and just kind of comment on how the larger retailers and merchants are utilizing Block services maybe differently than the smaller merchants. How does the value proposition sort of change, what’s resonating, and then just what strategy you might use to sort of lean into this move up-market?

Jack Dorsey: So, in terms of the verticalization and attracting — getting people more up-market, I think the biggest one is, we just have a much more focused effort around these verticals and there we maintain flexibility. A lot of our competitors are working on one vertical. We’re working on all three, all three of the dominant ones that you find within commerce. So the big aspects that people choose Square for is because, I might be a restaurant chain, but I also have some retail elements or it might be a chain of nail salons and provide services and retail. So we’re seeing a lot of crossover between all these verticals and because Square is one ecosystem and they all — it all connects together with all the operational utilities as well.

It’s very easy to choose and it’s very easy to add these new dimensions to your offering to your customers, which ultimately differentiates you from your competitors and encourage ourselves. So, if I were to point to one thing, that would be the flexibility that we enable and that flexibility extends to as you do get bigger or you’re coming to us as a bigger entity or you might have legacy systems or you might need to do custom work and that’s where our Square platform comes in, enables people to hire developers themselves, take tools, offer marketplace, to actually customize their work and customize their own system so that they can build the experience that they want for their customers so that flexibility is really significant, and one that continues to set us apart.

It also allows us to move much faster because we’re using the same developer platform internally as we’re exposing externally. So a lot of our interfaces are built on that. And it allows us to focus on the interface and experience and make sure that all of our developers have access to the same tools that we do, so they can build really compelling additions and our larger merchants can build compelling additions themselves on the same tools and that same foundation.

Ramsey El-Assal: Thank you.

Amrita Ahuja: And I’ll just add, Ramsey, that if you think about, to your question how the larger sellers use our platform differently from smaller sellers, I think one simple way to answer that is, they use more of our platform than smaller sellers and I think the last stat we shared in 2022, the mid-market sellers who adopted for more of our products had 15 times greater attention than those who only adopted one, and you know, they generally adopt more products than smaller sellers. So that ability to do take on more jobs on behalf of that merger seller ultimately builds more retentive relationship with them. And as Jack mentioned, that comes through not only in our vertical software offerings, each of which is now running at an annualized gross profit growth rate of $100 million or more during the second quarter but also a developer platform which provides third-party integrations, so the sellers can build more customized solutions and applications across a number of different aspects, not just payments, but orders, inventory, customers, et cetera.

And so the growth that we’re tracking on our vertical points of sale, 37% year-over-year in the second quarter and gross profit growth from our developer tools, which also outpaced overall Square gross profit growth, a real key area for us to continue to be tracking here along with our go-to-market orientation around a greater verticalized orientation from a marketing and sales perspective. We see this as being key elements of our platform and our go-to-market approach that ultimately helps us attract larger sellers.

Ramsey El-Assal: Great. Thanks so much.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Trevor Williams with Jefferies.

Trevor Williams: Great. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to ask on the SNS line within seller the disclosure on Square banking was helpful to see this quarter, but if you could just give us kind of a snapshot of current stack rank of the biggest revenue contributors to that line today? And then, second part to that would be on Payroll. Jack, you mentioned in your remarks some of the integration there with Cash App Taxes, but any broader update on Payroll and how you’re thinking about the longer-term opportunity to cross-sell into the existing sellers base there? Thanks.

Jack Dorsey: Sorry, your first question was on. Go ahead, Amrita.

Amrita Ahuja: I think the first question was on subscription and services within Square and helping the stack rank some of the largest Square products within that line. And I would orient you, Trevor, to our Square banking disclosures, where Square banking contributed $167 million in gross profit in the second quarter, the four biggest sort of areas there being Square Loans, Instant Transfer, Square Debit Card, and now our Square Savings product as well, which we’re now recognizing interest benefits from as part of our gross profit as well. So those are kind of the four biggest products from a banking perspective that I’d orient you to and that are driving meaningful growth in our Square banking initiative and more broadly across SNS for Square. I think the second question, Trevor, you had was on Payroll.

Trevor Williams: It was on Payroll, yeah, exactly. Just a cross-sell opportunity into the existing merchant base. Thanks.

Amrita Ahuja: I think we continue to see as we — especially as we grow our sales initiatives and deepen those relationships with upmarket sellers, we see a significant opportunity to drive software attached, whether its Payroll or any of our other 30-plus products across the Square ecosystem to drive attach into upmarket sellers. And so that’s a key part of our initiatives. And as I mentioned, it’s early days, we’re only a few months into having verticalized our inbound US sales team, but we are seeing higher software attach from that verticalization and we’re now in the process of ramping our outbound sales team as well, and hope to continue to drive that through products like Payroll and other products as we build those touchpoints with up-market sellers.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Jason Kupferberg with Bank of America.

Jason Kupferberg: Hey, thanks, guys. Just can you quickly review what you said about Square gross profit and GPV growth for Q4? And then just on the Cash App side, I think the inflows per active were up 8% in Q2, do you expect that to stay pretty stable in the second half? Thanks.

Amrita Ahuja: Jason, happy to take that one or start on that one. So let’s start with Square and will unpack some of the GPV trends that we’re looking at. Generally, we look at Square growth across three high-level components, customer acquisition, churn. and same-store growth. In the second quarter, we saw acquisition grow year-over-year, as I’ve mentioned already, churn was relatively stable and we saw a moderation or where we’ve seen moderation in growth is in the same-store growth element of those three elements or GPV per seller. So, let me kind of walk-through and unpack each of those. From a customer acquisition standpoint, in both the first quarter and the second quarter, we saw year-over-year growth in acquisition and based on trends to date, acquisition growth in the second quarter improved compared to the first quarter.