Shares in the New York Stock Exchange-listed Block lifted 7.5% in after hours trade after the company reported better-than-expected first quarter earnings, and disclosed plans to fund more bitcoin purchases with a portion of its profits from bitcoin-related products.
The company, formerly known as Square and founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey in 2009, reported revenue of $5.97 billion and a 22% jump in gross profit over a one year period to $2.09 billion.
A portion of this figure came from its bitcoin-related products, with the gross profit up 59% year-over-year to $80 million in the first quarter for those products. However, less than 3% of the company’s resources are dedicated to bitcoin-related products, Dorsey said in his note to investors.
Block’s bitcoin-related products encompass Cash App, the custodial wallet Bitkey, a bitcoin ASIC mining chip and mining system, and a team of developers contributing to the bitcoin open source network through Spiral.
Block now plans to invest 10% of its monthly gross profits from bitcoin products into purchasing the digital asset for investment. The company first bought 4,709 BTC for an average price of $50 million in October 2020, followed by an additional 3,318 BTC in 2021 for an average price of $170 million.
At the time of writing, Block had 8,038 BTC on its balance sheet, worth over $482 million at current prices. However, the firm ranks seventh on the list of publicly traded companies that hold bitcoin on their balance sheet, with MicroStrategy claiming the top spot with over $10.5 billion in BTC.
“Historically and moving forward, our investment in bitcoin transcends technology; it is an investment in a future where economic empowerment is the norm,” Dorsey said.
Block also released a “Bitcoin Blueprint For Corporate Balance Sheets,” which appears to be both a memo for Block’s bitcoin buying strategy and a playbook for other companies to follow suit.
According to the blueprint, Block will no longer make lump sum purchases of bitcoin, but rather, acquire the asset through a Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) approach — an investment strategy that involves purchases in smaller increments at regular intervals, designed to minimize volatility risk by lowering the average cost of investing.
Earlier this week, NBC news reported that federal prosecutors were looking into compliance lapses at Block, where the firm allegedly processed multiple cryptocurrency transactions for terrorist groups.
