Switch hitters are rare... Square's winning a batting title with its consumer and small biz facing businesses, processing your latte purchase from the neighborhood spot. The digital payments icon announced revenues rose 44% to $1.2B (sounds pretty good). But Square spent so much on growth that it suffered a $7M loss. Here are its 3 areas of focus.
Who ordered the Caviar?... DoorDash. Square is selling Caviar to another food delivery app. Square CEO Jack Dorsey is busy building payments ecosystems (+side-hustling as Twitter's CEO) — no time to fight in food delivery wars. It's not a bad return though: Square bought Caviar in 2014 for $90M. Now it's selling to DoorDash for $410M of cash and shares.
This is a rare miss for Square... The stock had risen 40% so far in 2019, and had more than tripled in the past two years. Becoming the best money friend of businesses was already an accomplishment. Then its Cash App came out of nowhere, becoming the best friend of fantasy football league coordinators who need to track down league dues.