XYZ
The setup
Block is back in the “wait, this thing might actually be stronger than the stock price implies” bucket. The call here is basically: the market is squinting at the wrong part of the picture.
Why the bulls are leaning in
Strip out Bitcoin trading, and Block’s Q1 looked pretty punchy:
- Revenue grew 23.8%
- Gross profit climbed 29.3%
- Gross margin widened to 66.7%
That’s the kind of combo investors like: growth that isn’t just coming from throwing more volume at the wall, but from taking a bigger bite out of each dollar of activity.
Cash App is doing the heavy lifting
The other juicy bit is the Cash App ecosystem. User growth may be slowing, but the users Block already has are getting stickier and more valuable. ARPU is moving up, engagement is deepening, and that’s often where the real long-term leverage hides. Fewer fireworks, more compounding.
Why you should care
If Block can keep widening margins while nudging monetization higher, the valuation case gets a lot more interesting. In other words: this may not be a “growth is dead” story — it might be a “the market is underestimating the engine” story.
Big picture: when a company can grow fast and get more efficient, the stock doesn’t need much imagination to rerate — it just needs investors to notice.