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Earnings Call: Q2 2018

Aug 1, 2018

Speaker 1

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Square Second Quarter 2018 Conference Call. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Jason Lee, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining our Q2 2018 earnings call. We have Jack and Sarah with us today. First, we want to remind everyone of the format of our earnings call. We have published a shareholder letter on our Relations website, which was available shortly after the market closed.

We will begin this call with some short prepared remarks before opening the call directly to your questions. During Q and A, we will take questions from our sellers in addition to questions from conference call participants. We would also like to remind everyone that we will be making forward looking statements on this call. Actual results could differ materially from those contemplated by our forward looking statements. Reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance.

Please take a look at our filings with the SEC for a discussion of the factors that could cause our results to differ. Also note that the forward looking statements on this call are based on information available to us as of today's date. We disclaim any obligation to update any forward looking statements except as required by law. Also, during this call, we will discuss certain non GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are provided in the shareholder letter on our Investor website.

These non GAAP measures are not intended to be a substitute for our GAAP results. Finally, this call in its entirety is being audio webcast on our Investor Relations website. An audio replay of this call will be available on our website shortly. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Jack.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Jason, and thanks, everyone, for joining us. We're really proud of our work this quarter. We added more offerings for restaurants and customers are spending more with Cash Card. Additionally, the breadth and depth of our ecosystem is enabling product integrations that are unique to Square. We're excited about the launch of Square for restaurants, our newest industry specific point of sale and our first for larger full service restaurants.

With this product, restaurants can more easily manage operations so that servers can spend more time delighting diners. This ease of use also extends to setup, while other points of sale require salesperson onboard, more than 60% of Square for restaurant sellers have self onboarded. We're also making it easier for restaurants to manage online and in person orders by working to integrate Caviar with Square for Restaurants. This integration will be unique to Square because we're the only company that provides both the point of sale and food delivery and pickup. Caviar is growing rapidly.

Revenue in the Q2 of 2018 more than doubled year over year in a computer or phone for pickup or delivery and for individuals or groups, including corporate catering. And diners come to Caviar for food that they can't get anywhere else. More than 25% of food order volume is from restaurants that are exclusive to Caviar. This full offering of delivery, pickup and corporate catering has helped us win in San Francisco, where Caviar is a top food ordering platform. Finally, we continue to expand Cash App to provide more financial services that customers rely on daily.

We recently launched Cash Boost, a cash card rewards program that gives customers instant discounts when they go to merchants like Shake Shack. Overall, Cash Card drives engagement. Customers spent $250,000,000 in June. The spend has nearly tripled since December and represents $3,000,000,000 on an annualized basis. Additionally, we've integrated Cash App with Caviar, which allows couriers to automatically get paid after they complete a delivery.

We think paying couriers instantly for their work is the right thing to do and our ecosystem makes that possible. All these new services are the result of our focus on the long term. We're listening to our customers, building, listening some more and always improving. We'll continue to take the long view and push ourselves to deliver remarkable products to our customers. Now I'll turn it over to Sarah for some more detailed remarks on our financials.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Jack. This is a strong quarter for the company. Total net revenue was 815,000,000 dollars up 48% year over year compared to 45% in Q1. Adjusted revenue was $385,000,000 up 60% year over year compared to 51% in Q1. This represents our 5th quarter of accelerating revenue growth even when excluding the impact from acquisitions in the quarter.

Transaction based profit for the products we monetize through payments was $230,000,000 up 34% year over year. Half of our GPB came from larger sellers, which are those that generate over $125,000 in annualized GPB. This is up from 46% in the Q2 of 2017 and highlights how our cohesive ecosystem is resonating with sellers of all sizes. We saw strong momentum in subscription and services adjusted revenue growth, which accelerated to 130.1% year over year, driven primarily by Instant Deposit, Caviar, Cash Card and Square Capital and also included the impact of the acquisitions of Zesty and Weebly. Excluding acquisitions, growth also accelerated.

Speed continues to differentiate Square to our sellers across all our products. For example, instant deposit volume was $4,000,000,000 in the 2nd quarter. Hardware revenue was $18,000,000 in the quarter, up 78% year over year, driven by continued growth in Square Register as well as Square Stand and Square Reader for contactless and chip. GAAP net loss in the Q2 was $6,000,000 compared to a net loss of $16,000,000 in the Q2 of 2017. Net loss per share basic and diluted was $0.01 for the Q2 of 2018 compared to a net loss per share of $0.04 in the Q2 of 2017.

Adjusted EBITDA was $68,000,000 representing a margin of 18%, up 3 points from Q2 of 2017, underscoring that we are driving operating leverage even as we continue to reinvest in the business. Looking ahead, given the ongoing momentum, we are increasing our top line guidance for the full year. For 2018, we now expect total net revenue to be within a range of $3,190,000,000 to $3,220,000,000 and adjusted revenue to be in a range of $1,520,000,000 to 1,540,000,000 dollars At the midpoint, this represents 55% year over year growth, up from 49% in our prior guidance. We are maintaining our full year adjusted EBITDA guidance of $240,000,000 to $250,000,000 as we continue to reinvest to drive future growth. Our 2018 priorities of Omnichannel, Financial Services and International will guide our reinvestment spend for the remainder of the year.

We believe these areas will provide meaningful value to our sellers and consumers, not to mention substantially increase our total addressable market. Our growth acceleration in recent periods is a result of investments we've made over the past few years. Our success with Cash App is a great example where we're building an ecosystem of financial services for individuals in the same way that we did for businesses. With that, I'll turn it back to the operator to start the Q and A portion of the call.

Speaker 1

Your first question comes from Tien tsin Huang with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Speaker 5

Thanks so much. Good afternoon. I'll start by asking on

Speaker 6

the outlook. As for the 2nd quarter, pretty impressed with the 18% EBITDA margin. You accelerated revenue again. You raised revenue like you said, Sarah, but kept EBITDA unchanged. So it sounds like you're reinvesting more aggressively.

Can you just give us a little bit more detail on where you're putting those incremental dollars to work? Could we see more in places like Boost, for example, or maybe Square Register? Thanks.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Tien Tsin. So I think you're nailing it in terms of what we're trying to balance right now. So as ever, we want to lean into growth. We see a lot of untapped opportunities ahead of us, but we want to make sure we're doing that with financial discipline. So as you saw in Q2, we hit 60% top line growth, which I'm kind of personally wowed by, but we did that while still showing 3 points of EBITDA margin improvement.

And so if you look at what the back half second half guide implies, it's also 3 points of margin improvement. And we think that's the right balance of really doubling down on our investment, but making sure that we're doing it while staying mindful of operating leverage in the business. Where we'll invest? So those three areas, omni channel, clearly we made a bigger move with the acquisition of Weebly last quarter and so there's work to do there as we continue to integrate. On the financial services side, really happy with how Cash App generally is progressing.

Consistently a top 30 app in the App Store. I think it was as high as 15 or 14 earlier when I looked. You asked about Boost specifically. That is one area of investment because it's all about how do we drive daily utility on Cash App. And then finally on international, it's a combination of both building out remarkable products.

I'm sure you'll ask us more on this in the call. But once we have a remarkable product, we want to keep driving awareness. So a good example is the lean in we've done on go to market in the UK and we'll continue to do more of that as we get into the back half of the year.

Speaker 6

Okay. That's great. Thanks so much.

Speaker 4

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Your next question comes from Jason Hoeferberg with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is

Speaker 7

open. Great. Good afternoon, guys. I just wanted to ask follow-up to Tien Tsin's question. Just as we think ahead about margins, I mean, this trade off totally makes sense.

And obviously, you guys are doing a fantastic job on the top line. But just so people's expectations are properly calibrated, I think on a full year basis, we're now looking at about 200 bps of margin expansion year over year in 2018. When you think longer term, I know you had put some future data targets out there in the past. Do we still get to those targets? Does it just take longer?

And even as we start to have early thoughts around 2019, is 200 to 300 basis points a year kind of the right cadence just because you have so much TAM to go after that you're not going to let too much flow through to the bottom line?

Speaker 4

So thanks, Jason. And we're not ready to give full on guidance for FY 2019 or beyond. But if I kind of start with the premise I think beneath your question, nothing has changed in terms of our long term margin potential. So we've talked about having a long term margin goal of 35% to 40%. If you look at the 2 major ways we monetize whether through a payments business model or through subscription services, in both cases as we showed at Investor Day, we can get over 50% incremental margins on those businesses.

And so right now with the ability to both continue to invest in product, so I think Cash App is a great example as I said in my prepared remarks of investing today for businesses that can be really material to the top and bottom line over the next 2 to 3 years. We want to keep doing that investment. So that is hiring great engineers, great data scientists, great designers, product managers. But even beyond that, if you think about sales and marketing, what we're seeing in there is we still see a 3 to 4 quarter payback period and we have a positive dollar based retention. So within $1 in today to bring on a new customer to the Square ecosystem pays for itself within a year and then actually grows.

Last number we gave you was about 113% year over year and again that's been fairly consistent. So everything we look at says keep investing. The more we grow the ecosystem, the more we bring Square sellers onto the platform and now consumers onto the platform, the more opportunity we have down the line to continue to cross sell and upsell into that base. So we think that is the right stance to take. So again, it's a balance, and that's why I'm really happy to see 60% type growth this quarter, but still doing it with 3 points of margin expansion and the guidance still allowing for 3 points of margin expansion in the back half of the year.

Speaker 7

So just a quick follow-up on instant deposit volume because that was a real big number at 4 $1,000,000,000 Can you give us a sense where the mix sits between the merchant side and the consumer side there? And what kind of EBITDA flow through do you generally get that volume?

Speaker 4

Sure. So Instant Deposit speaks to first of all that our sellers appreciate speed in all we do, whether it's fast hardware to accept a payment type or fast access to their funds. And we revolutionized that from day 1 at Square by giving them next day settlement and then we sped it up by giving them instant deposit. That's $4,000,000,000 that we noted in Q2, the best comp for that is we gave about a $2,000,000,000 number in Q3 of last year. So a little under a year, we've actually doubled the instant deposit volume.

It is a mix of both sellers and Cash App being monetized. They both value the speed point. We don't we're not at a point where we want to break that apart, but it is an important monetization for both. And then in terms of EBITDA flow through, as you can imagine, in a lot of these products like an Instant Deposit where we've already acquired the customer, there's not a lot of incremental costs when we add on a new product like this. And that is the beauty of the ecosystem is once we have a customer in place, we know that the more they use a second product or a third product from Square, the more sticky they are and it is less expensive for us typically to be able to both upsell that product, but then be able to support that product over the long run.

And I think we gave a nice data point last quarter that of our largest sellers, more than 50% of them take a second product from Square.

Speaker 7

Right. Okay. Real helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 1

We will now take a call from a Square seller.

Speaker 8

Hi. My name is Sarah Frienberger. My company is Dream and Color Jewelry. We have one of our biggest sales opportunities coming up actually starting next weekend with Shaker Woods Festival. And we've been notified that the Wi Fi at the festival is pretty unpredictable.

But we use Square quite a bit with our tiny little company. So I'm just kind of curious as to how secure the Square offline payments system is.

Speaker 3

Yes. Thanks, Sarah. Thank you for being a Square seller as well. We've put a lot of thought and investment into security around the board, but especially to make sure that all of our sellers can continue to make sales even in rough network or unpredictable network environments. So we do focus a lot of our attention.

So you can trust that it's going to work and everything will remain secure as you use it, even in unpredictable network environments.

Speaker 8

Okay. Thank you very much.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Your next question comes from Jim Schneider with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Speaker 9

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I was wondering if you can maybe comment a little bit on your vertical specific software solutions. You've obviously launched restaurants, but before that, you had retail. Can you maybe talk about how the retail ramp has gone?

Maybe how penetrated you are with those vertical specific solutions? What your ambitions for where those eventually go are? And then I guess more to the point, what the end goal is in terms of how many restaurants of your total restaurant population you expect, for example, to be penetrated with that solution?

Speaker 3

Yes. Thanks, Jim. So we the way when we first started the company, we approached us from more of a horizontal approach, so building a system that worked for every type of business. We made a decision to focus on 3 specific verticals retail, restaurants and services and build against them. We launched retail not so long ago, restaurants more recently and have pulls in more of a horizontal way as well.

So that we are no matter if you're a smaller full serve restaurant or quick serve restaurant or a larger one, you have something that's easy to use and you can continue to push into focusing on your customers and your diners. So that's the intention. We are constantly learning from what our sellers are doing in each of the 3 verticals and looking for ways to make their lives easier. And that really reflects how we think about our road map and the faster we can move, the faster adoption we see.

Speaker 9

That's helpful. Thanks. And then maybe just a follow-up. Can you maybe comment on Square Capital? Still very, very good numbers there, but growth has slowed to kind of the low 20s at this point.

So can you maybe talk about some of the initiatives you're undertaking to expand the number of addressable sellers who want to take that product? And I guess, what do you think that penetration rate could go over time? Or do you think you've kind of taken that about as far as you want, so that's going to be more of an in line growth from here?

Speaker 4

Sure. So, Jim, on capital overall, I mean, a good quarter, dollars 390,000,000 of originations, 60,000 loans. What I'm really impressed by is that this quarter they crossed the $3,000,000,000 threshold of loans facilitated to date. That's 500,000 loans and advances made. So we're really tapping into an unmet need that we see out there broadly in Squarespace but beyond Squarespace.

I think about $80,000,000,000 of unmet small business demand for loans. So I think it's an amazing product and it will continue to grow as our base grows. But in terms of new initiatives, there's a couple strong irons in the fire right now. Partnerships is an area that we have been working on for multiple years. We have learned as we manage the risk.

And I think the most recent partner we announced just as recently as last week is eBay, which is a great example of finding a partner where their sellers look like Square sellers. So that's one area where we continue to expand the front door. And in fact, we bring net new sellers in through capital. And then over time, just as we do with other products where we see net new, we can obviously begin to cross sell and upsell as appropriate. The second area on capital that we continue to iterate on is installments.

So recall that is effectively where we place ourselves at that really interesting nexus between the buyer and the seller. We have oriented to be a seller product. So we know that small businesses traditionally don't have access to installment programs. So it's a tool that larger businesses use to help them grow and we want to make sure it's now on offer to smaller businesses. What we're able to use there is the knowledge of both the business itself, but also the consumer.

And so we're starting to learn about consumer information that we might see more broadly on Square's network. And from that just continue to test and iterate. And I think what we see so far gets us excited because the sellers who are utilizing Square installments are absolutely seeing their business grow. So the most important thing when they grow because then we'll grow.

Speaker 9

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Your next question comes from Dan Herrlin with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Speaker 5

Thanks. Good evening. I had a question on Square for Restaurants and in particular the full service restaurant. So my question is kind of a little more of the competitive dynamic and where the wins are coming from. So we've been hearing that micros in the hands of Oracle is really not being supported like through the dealership network that it has historically had.

And so my question is, are you winning a lot of this business actual share gains where you're ripping and replacing existing systems? Or are you riding a wave of incremental new restaurants that are opening up in specific geographies where you obviously have strong hand?

Speaker 3

I believe it's a little bit of both, and that's been consistent with our general growth across our entire seller base. We do have a unique advantage though given the deep relationships we have with our sellers and how seller focused we are, especially on the restaurant side. Even if folks have not tried the Square Foot Restaurants brand, they are aware of the Caviar brand, and how much focused how much partnership focus there is there. So there is a lot of attention and awareness already going in. And for a restaurant to come in through the restaurant's point of sale and get access to the full ecosystem inclusive of Square Capital and payroll and our customer directory and invoices and everything that would make their business operations a little bit easier and more efficient.

There's a lot of pull. So we definitely see switches, but we're also seeing net new and a lot of new restaurants coming up as well.

Speaker 5

That's great. Can I just ask a quick follow-up on cash boost? It wasn't clear to me, are you guys actually funding the rewards or is that a merchant funded reward program and you're acting as kind of the conduit in order to facilitate it

Speaker 7

to the consumer? Thank you.

Speaker 3

Yes, thanks. One of the things that's been really effective for us with cash and a lot of our products is this mindset of experimentation. So cash boost started out as really just a question. We saw an opportunity where the audience that we were serving, the customers that we're serving didn't typically have access to a rewards program on any of their cards, if they had a card in the 1st place. So for us, 1st and foremost, to be able to issue them a card that's Visa branded, that works anywhere Visa is accepted, that works at any ATM that they can fund directly through a direct deposit with their paycheck and put a rewards program there was interesting.

The second thing that we took into consideration is where are they spending their money? We want to make sure that we were delivering a solution that was consistent with their usage and what they wanted to do. And then finally, we want to make sure that we have a lot of optionality moving forward. So to get to your question, we want to make sure that we are experimenting with a variety of models, and then we'll ultimately determine which one is best. But first and foremost, we want to make sure that we're giving people a support for where they're spending Cash Card and obviously using it in a daily way because it is their financial instrument to pay for things and then make the appropriate moves to make sure that we can scale it and actually turn it into a big part of our business.

So we're super excited about it. It's early, but we're seeing a lot of resonance that gets us pretty excited about its future.

Speaker 5

Thank

Speaker 1

you. Your next question comes from Darrin Peller with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

Speaker 10

Thanks guys. Nice job on the growth. Just I just have a question on the Cash App again. I mean, first of all, I'm not sure if you've updated the 7 or 8,000,000 users that you had disclosed by the end of the year number. And then just when considering the monetization of that, I mean, Jack, there's clearly instant deposit debit card.

How far along are these? And maybe just have you thought of what other opportunities there are to monetize this longer term?

Speaker 3

Yes. We're not going to be updating the monthly number. We wanted to focus everyone on the card itself. We've been really impressed with the growth, and it is showing more evidence that people are using this as a primary, if not only spending device. So we try to be really thoughtful in terms of how people might use this on a daily basis and adding the ability to store money with us, adding the ability to give a virtual ABA number that anyone can direct deposit their paycheck into, that the card be an ATM card as well, so you could actually go to an ATM and take money out of it.

Those are all reasons that reinforce one another that we are seeing evidence that this is a primary account for them. And that gets us excited because these are folks who were not on the financial system before.

Speaker 6

Right.

Speaker 3

And certainly not transacting in any meaningful way. So we do think the card is pretty far along, but we see a lot of opportunity for innovation there, and we're pretty excited about what's to come on it. And then in terms of monetization, yes, I mean, there are certainly multiple paths to monetize cash. I think we've shown a number of them and they're all extremely healthy and more importantly reinforce the usage. And our incentives are in line with who we're serving and our customers.

So it's not a tax on their usage, which is great. So in terms of how we look at new features, we're really looking at the broader ecosystem of how people use financial devices and look for opportunities to take some friction out or to expand who we might be able to serve.

Speaker 8

And

Speaker 3

particularly interesting is the underserved and the unbanked. We're definitely reaching that audience and that's consistent with the broader Square outreach as well. Starting 9 years ago, we reached an underserved and under banked seller, and happy to do it again with consumers this time.

Speaker 10

Got it. That's great. Thanks guys.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Your next question comes from Josh Beck with KeyBanc. Your line is open.

Speaker 11

Thanks. I wanted to ask about omni channel. You called that out as number one investment priority for this year. And I know you've only had Weebly for a couple of months in your hands. But as we think about the integration moving forward, is that something that's going to be embedded into the Square point of sale app?

Is it a distinct kind of bolt on offering like you've done with Square for Restaurants? Just how should we be thinking about the rollout of that product?

Speaker 3

Yes. Just to back up, I mean, a lot of people when they hear the word omni channel, they immediately rush to e commerce and online. And the way we've been thinking about it is, there's all these new channels of potential sales emerging. And what it really represents tangibly is meeting your customers where they are. We've always had a principle of making sure that our sellers can always make the sale no matter if the payment is coming across the physical counter or digitally.

So we think much more broadly about omnichannel and all the channels, one could sell through. Caviar is a good example of this, how we think about invoices and and virtual terminal or other great examples of this partnership with Eventbrite, another such example. In terms of the online space in particular and Weebly, it's been 60 days. We've reconfirmed and reaffirmed the reasons why we felt the companies would be so great together. The team's been amazing.

The customer base is really excellent, presents a bunch of opportunity, especially as we think about going outside our 5 markets. We're thinking through the branding and how to best place it. Thing that I think we have done really well is maintain a sense of cohesion and in that there is simplicity, you don't feel the seams across the various services and the products. So we want the same intention as we think about Weebly and e commerce. Our sellers should not have to think about selling online.

They should just have to think about what they're selling, and ultimately who they're selling to. And we can handle, making sure that they can sell across multiple channels in a very simple and easy way. So we still have a lot to learn in terms of how the integration will complete from a customer facing standpoint, but we're pretty excited to start rolling some of those things out.

Speaker 11

And just as a follow-up, so obviously Weebly does have a very international footprint. There's so you have new assets. There surely have been some competitive developments internationally. So when you just kind of take a step back and think about the international opportunity as well as the outperformance you've had in the business, does it make you want to accelerate your path to move further into those existing international markets or push into others? Are you thinking about that any differently?

Speaker 4

Sure. From an international standpoint, I mean the current markets we're in remember are quite massive, dollars 6,000,000,000,000 in gross receipts across the 4 markets excluding the United States. And so I think this year it was a really good focus for us to go back into the market beyond the U. S, so Canada, Japan, Australia, U. K.

And really think about what next to make the product remarkable. We've talked a little bit about the U. K. To date, but what we're seeing there is there is work to do just to not just upsell or not just to bring folks who are already on the system up and on to a more modern platform, but more importantly to go back out into the 50% of micro and small merchants who don't accept cards today. And that's where market development work needs to get done and it's kind of surprising to us in a way that it hasn't been done to date.

But helping explain to them that they are missing sales when they don't accept cards. I think 1 in 6 folks in the UK don't carry cash. And that when people do use cards, they typically spend more. And so there's a really good story there. We've seen it.

We've done town takeovers in fact in the UK, most recently at a time called Darwin in Lancashire, where 95% of merchants were cash only and we're expecting to get the same result we got in Holywell where we get them up to about 95% accepting cards. So a ton of work to do there. What we believe is giving us to kind of segue from what Jack was talking about is 40% of their revenue is outside of the United States. And of that 40%, more like half is in the market the other markets we're in. So it is allowing us a way to test other markets for Square's products broadly speaking would have resonance.

And so it's always a balance of continuing to really put a lot of investment behind a market that's still young where we have a lot of room to grow versus going a little thinner and going broader. And I think as we go into 2019 planning, we always go back to make the right trade offs there. And remember, it's not just about our seller platform anymore. Cash launched in the UK last quarter. So now we're starting to see what it's like to go more international with the consumer product.

And does the pace of MVMT internationally change when we look at something that is a purely software driven online product, without having a hardware component associated with it.

Speaker 11

Okay, great. Thank you both.

Speaker 4

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Your next question comes from Lisa Alize with MoffettNathanson. Your line is open.

Speaker 12

Hi, good afternoon guys and I'm happy to be joining your calls. I just had a follow-up to Jason's question related to Instant Deposit. I guess, 2 parts. First, can you just give a little bit of color around the usage patterns for Instant Deposit, meaning like what type of adoption level are you seeing across the base, the frequency of the transactions, average transaction sizes, any kind of color there? And then I guess the second question is just how you're seeing that business impacted by things like the rollout of same time same day settlement for ACH in the U.

S. And the rollout of competitive offerings by some of your P2P competitors like PayPal and Venmo? Thank you.

Speaker 4

Sure. Thanks, Lisa. And yes, welcome to the call. From an instant deposit standpoint, it comes back to this concept of speed. Speed really matters to our customers, whether it's the fact that our contactless and ship reader is getting down into seconds to take the transaction, whether it was next day settlement and then instant deposit.

We know it really matters to small businesses to have fast access to working capital. When they have fast access, they can keep reinvesting in their business and make their business grow. And so in terms of usage patterns on the seller side, it's a lot of what we thought as we launched that particularly sellers that had big weekend businesses like hair salons or bars and restaurants. They often wouldn't get paid out in a traditional world until maybe the Tuesday. And they were having to float paying their staff, paying their suppliers without seeing their payments come through the door.

And so we're able to smooth a lot of that out. And that continues in terms of usage. And then similarly on the consumer side, we've seen tremendous uptick from a Cash App perspective of people who want to get fast access to funds. Now clearly, we're balancing that by creating a balance, and starting to give you real utility on keeping your money in the Cash App. And then from that being able to use all the pieces that Jack spoke to, the card virtually, the card offline, etcetera, etcetera.

In terms of competitive offerings or really just speed generally, a point I think we've talked about before, I mean moving money quickly in and of itself isn't the difficult thing. It's hard to do, but we've done it. But risk is really where the rubber hits the road. And you really have to be doing real time automated risk management if you're going to get into the business of instantly depositing out to sellers and to individuals. And we were born in that era, so our risk from the get go was built with at the time we said software algorithms, today what people would call machine learning, getting into deep learning.

I think we've given a stat before that 99.95% of all of our transactions are automated. They never fall to a human being to look at and we continue to grind away on how do we take that number higher. And so we think that's really the differentiation between us and a lot of our competitive bench is the ability to do risk in that hyper automated fashion.

Speaker 12

Terrific. Thank you. And then just my follow-up on the core business, which has now been growing fairly consistently TPV growth in the 30% range with pretty stable transaction based profit percentages. Can you give a sense though as you look out how you're seeing the trajectory of that business? Meaning, do you see a path toward accelerating the volumes there or potentially expanding the profit percentages as you're adding more software content into the offerings like with the vertical specific solutions?

Speaker 4

So, I wouldn't label it core and I guess non core. The way we think about the breakdown on our P and L is what is the monetization method that we're utilizing. So it's not a product based P and L. So we have optionality and we use that optionality to be as aggressive as possible when we go to market. So for example, if you take a software product like Invoices, massive utility to sellers, that's a good example where unlike our competition, we don't charge a software fee That's a good example where unlike our competition, we don't charge a software fee.

Instead, we monetize it all through payments. So it would fall under that transaction based profit line. Equally, there are places where we can get a lot more aggressive from a payment standpoint because we are going to charge a monthly fee. And a good example would be say something like Square for Retail, where we charge $2.5 $0.10 but we charge a $60 per device fee, and then $20 thereafter. So it's really about how do we balance the best outcome of price as a feature of the product.

So we don't build a remarkable product and price it, rather price is part of how we build it to begin with. In terms of what accelerates the overall business, it's effectively what we've talked about before, the ability to continue to move up market into larger sellers, so 50% of our GPV not coming from larger sellers. It's the ability to flip and take their full book of business. So if they started online, but now want to move offline, if they started offline but want to be able to use browser based payments, we want to take their full book of business. And then the 3rd vector is international.

Speaker 12

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Your next question comes from Bryan Keane with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Speaker 13

Hi, guys. Wanted to ask about Caviar. I'm impressed by the growth of that business. So just trying to figure out what's driving that top line. Are you guys taking share from other providers?

Or is it just organically growing as people outsource more of their delivery and options for that business? And then secondly, just on the EBITDA margins of Caviar, what do they look like today? And what do they look like when they get to scale?

Speaker 3

Thanks. Yes. So, we think what's driving the growth is and what and equally what sets Caviar apart from everyone else is number 1, the deep relationship with our restaurants. So we do spend a lot of time obsessing over their operations and continuing to look for ways to make them a lot more efficient. And there's not a lot of our peers who really focus on those elements.

It's more of a buyer focused to diner focused approach. And the reason this is meaningful is because ultimately if you do want to drive more sales to a restaurant, you need to make sure that fits in with your standard operations as well and people actually coming into your door. And we found a really good mix and a balance. So we certainly see a drive from the sellers themselves and the restaurants themselves to encourage our customers to look at the Caviar platform and download the app, which is awesome. We have a very friendly, very easy, super accessible brands.

We've put a lot of focus on the customer experience as well, right down to the courier. And so starting with the easing the operations of a restaurant all the way to when the food is handed off to a customer. We've really focused on making sure that that feels effortless, it feels easy and it feels really simple. I think the other thing that we benefit from is the fact that we are part of Square and we have a much broader ecosystem that we can show these restaurants to, where they're just doing pickup or they're doing delivery. We can show them everything else that we have to offer inclusive of things like Square Payroll and Square Capital, our Square for Restaurants, point of sale, our customer directory.

So we do have a much broader offering that people don't have to put together all the pieces around. And we are seeing really strong momentum and it's really important that we keep this momentum up. Dogmatic approaches won't help. So we have to be really nimble as we think about how to extend our roadmap and really serve both sellers and their customers in the right way. And I'll let Sarah take the question on EBITDA margins.

Speaker 4

Sure. Thanks Jack. So just from an EBITDA margin perspective, Brian, holistically, we really think about the business more holistically. We want to make sure we're in a good business and we believe Caviar is a very good business, both from a top line growth perspective, but also from a unit economic perspective. And it continues to get better as we get scale.

And frankly, as we get better and better on efficiency, the team, it's a good place, as an example where we do use machine learning to think about how do we up the number of deliveries a courier can make in a given period of time. It's one of the main drivers of the gross margin in the business. So net net, when I think of it holistically, we're trying to balance off, as Jack has pointed out, a business like Caviar and how it can insert into the point of sale and with that drive more point of sale and make us really unique and differentiated from anyone else in the market. And then against that continue to balance the overall uplift in overall EBITDA margins at a company level. Back to that point I made about Q2 being 3 points of improvement year over year and the back half of the year back half of the year being a 3 point improvement year over year.

Speaker 10

Great. Thanks guys.

Speaker 4

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Your next question comes from Paul Conderau with Credit Suisse. Your line is open.

Speaker 7

Great. Thanks. Thanks for taking my question. I also had a question on Caviar just as it's done very well. And when you think about replicating that ecosystem in other cities, I wonder if you could talk about what that strategy looks like.

Is that something that might be where you look to do M and A? Or could you expand it more organically in other cities?

Speaker 3

Yes. I mean, we've with Cavair, we have been pretty aggressive with M and A in terms of expansion. So we've shown a number of acquisitions that help us either open or strengthen our current markets. So that is certainly a potential. We one of the reasons we launched Pickup is because we could see many more markets faster and that gives us an opportunity to learn about those restaurants much faster and then work out all the logistics that we would need for a delivery hub as well.

So we made a conscious choice some time ago to not make caviar about delivery, but really make it about food. And we want to be in the first consideration whenever you're hungry and you don't want to make something at home. And that meant that we had to really look deeply at various ways that food can come to you. So delivery is where we started and pickup is the next iteration. Of course, there are opportunities within dine in as well and that's where moves like Square for restaurants really fits in and continues to strengthen the ecosystem.

But we do believe that our approach is number 1, optimize for learning, so that we can learn where to make the next move in terms of, what we need to do in delivery operations. And number 2, really paying attention to the market and tone behaviors and making sure that we fit the solution in the right way. But ultimately, we want Caviar to be everywhere and as an ultimate food destination and again in that first consideration set whenever someone is hungry.

Speaker 7

Great. Thanks for that detail. And I guess just as a follow-up to switch gears to the bank application, if you could update us on the status with the FDIC and then whether this OCC National Charter might make sense for Square? I know it was just announced, so you haven't maybe had a lot of time to look through it, but is that kind of a possible route for you?

Speaker 3

Yes. So we have an ongoing dialogue with the FDIC in Utah. We decided to withdraw and refile, which allows us to amend and strengthen some areas of our application with the FDIC. In terms of the OCC FinTech Charter, we're pretty encouraged about the continued conversations between regulators and companies like ours. And we continue to believe that we're really well positioned to broaden access to the financial system, which is our core purpose.

Speaker 7

Thanks a lot.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Your last question will come from Rayna Kumar with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Speaker 12

Hi, thanks for taking my question. What has been your progress with Square Register and Retail POS? How far upmarket have you been able to go with these products? And just how has your initial traction been with Square for Restaurants?

Speaker 4

Sure. So in terms of Square Register progress, that we I think Jack already spoke to it in terms of what it brings to sellers. We recognize the Square Register that larger sellers and actually sellers of all sizes are what we're seeing right now, want to continue to have a better and better experience sitting right there on their countertop. And what they have loved is the customer display. We hear that over and over again.

And I think it's a good example of when we build a product, we wanted to highlight our seller. It's not about Square. It's actually about their business. They also love the connection they get with digital receipts, the engagement with loyalty. I was actually looking at our digital receipts number.

We've sent $497,000,000 digital receipts just in the trailing 12 months, which really speaks to how much we draw together the seller with their buyer. In terms of the fit, Square Register does bring on slightly larger sellers. So we see an average GPV of about $300,000 As of Q1, we haven't really updated it, but it hasn't changed massively. About a third of those orders are coming from new to Square sellers. And we'd expect that to continue to grow over time because the base will ultimately fully upgrade.

And then from there, it's really about a new doorway into Square. And as expected, it really does work well in food, services and retail, our major verticals. So Square Edge are doing really quite nicely and continuing to just underscore Square's strength from a hardware perspective. In terms of how far we can go, today I don't really see a limit in terms of how far we go in general across our seller base. Clearly when you get into really large merchants, they often have a need for more of an API integration.

They may not want soup to nuts square because they may already have a lot of systems in place. And that's exactly where the Build A Square or the API platform comes into its own. And I think that's allowing us to really penetrate larger and larger sellers. And then I think you asked about restaurants progress as well. Still very young in market.

We gave you a little bit of color in the shareholder letter. So I think the good of it is, it's a huge market. So 300,000 restaurants in the U. S. Alone, dollars 200,000,000,000 in gross receipts.

When you get outside the U. S. It's about double that. So clearly tons of opportunity. I think the good is we are seeing it as a push on the larger sellers as we expected.

So the average GPV of our restaurants customer is $650,000 And I think Jack already alluded to, we see nice kind of integration of other products there too that if someone comes on on Square for Restaurants, they may be a very natural fit for things like payroll, a very natural fit for things like loyalty. And so those are kind of the ways we can lean in to make sure we're selling the whole ecosystem on Square. Thank you. Okay, great. Thanks, Rainey.

Speaker 1

I would now like to turn the call over to the company for closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Thank you, everyone, for joining our call. I would like to remind everyone that we will be hosting our Q3 2018 earnings call on November 7. Thanks again for participating today.

Speaker 1

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's program. This does conclude the program. You may

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