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Block Party

The headline “earnings miss on staff party” is any company's worst nightmare.

Joe Aston |
Block Party
Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Block. June 2021. Photo: Bloomberg / Eva Marie Uzcategui.

Jack Dorsey's US payments company Block is still the 11th largest stock on the ASX by virtue of its 2022 Afterpay acquisition. Its Australian CDIs were down 16 per cent on Friday after the company unveiled its September quarter results on Thursday (US time).

Dorsey might reasonably consider himself harshly judged. Block missed analysts' expectations of earnings per share, which were nevertheless up 63 per cent on a year earlier. The Cash App division, which includes Afterpay, posted a 24 per cent increase in gross profit versus the prior September quarter.[[Block doesn't break out earnings by division but the company made US$409 million in operating income for the quarter.]]

Jefferies analyst Trevor Williams highlighted that Block beat gross profit expectations by US$60 million but EBIT expectations by only US$7 million, denoting lower "flow-through".

That was down to US$68 million of additional expenses in the quarter, which Block's 10-Q filing attributed mostly to "an in-person company event held in the third quarter of 2025." Sounds like one helluva knees-up!