Square (SQ -1.57%) has been one of the most impressive growth stories in the financial technology, or fintech, space. However, even with a market cap of more than $90 billion, Square could still multiply in size from here, as Fool.com contributor Matt Frankel, CFP, explains in this Fool Live video clip, recorded on May 14.
10 stocks we like better than Square
When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*
David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the ten best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Square wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.
*Stock Advisor returns as of May 11, 2021
Matt Frankel: Square, their core business is payment processing. I had co-founder Jim McKelvey on Industry Focus right before the pandemic hit, probably the most fun I've ever had doing an interview. How he founded the company because he was an art dealer and couldn't take Amex in a cost-effective way. It was founded to help small businesses accept payments, period. They've built that up to where their payment processing is seeing volume at a rate of over $130 billion a year. They've added adjacent services such as Square Capital, which is business lending, that including PPP loans, did almost $1 billion of loans last quarter. The Cash App is by far the highest growth part of the business. Gross profit from Cash App was up 171% year over year in the first quarter. That's pretty crazy, and fun fact, the Cash App delivered a higher gross profit than the seller part of Square's business for the first time ever this past quarter. That's actually the biggest part of their business. Everyone thinks it's payment processing, that's changed. A big reason for the high revenue in the Cash App business is Bitcoin, Square did about $3.5 billion of Bitcoin sales in the first quarter. That is 11X what it was a year ago. That's enormous. I've heard stats that Square is responsible for almost one-fourth of U.S. Bitcoin volume these days on its own. Considering big competitors like Coinbase and Gemini for just a person-to-person payment to have that share is pretty impressive. The growth thesis is the Cash App has a ton of adjacent possibilities. They've said before that they want Cash App to do pretty much whenever you make those. Think of things like a high-yield savings platform, personal loans, mortgage loans, auto loans, insurance products. We could list 100 different things. Square just got a banking charter so that'll make some of that a whole lot easier. The company's profitable, not consistently yet, but it is profitable and over $4 billion in cash on the balance sheet, well rounded, creating a great financial service ecosystem. I always say that I bought Square before it was cool to buy Square and I've held on ever since I bought a three days after the IPO, I think it was.
