The Leadership Letter

Real correspondence from the people running real companies — and what it reveals about leadership.

Win Bigger Customers Without Cutting Your Price

The strongest growth signal in this letter isn't revenue — it's that larger sellers are choosing Square on product merit, not discounts.

We are pleased with our performance in the third quarter, demonstrated by continued revenue growth at scale and ongoing improvements in operating efficiency. Gross Payment Volume (GPV) for the third quarter was $13.2 billion, up 39% year over year. Total net revenue was $439 million, up 32% year over year. Adjusted Revenue was $178 million, up 51% year over year. Net loss was $32 million, an improvement of $22 million on a year-over-year basis, and we achieved positive Adjusted EBITDA of $12 million.

GPV from larger sellers grew 55% year over year; larger sellers continue to come to Square for best-in-class services. We continue to grow GPV from larger sellers and maintain overall transaction revenue margin for several reasons. First, as demonstrated by positive dollar-based retention across our entire seller base, many sellers grow when they join Square. Second, larger sellers switch to Square for the benefits of our entire ecosystem, including fully-featured point of sale software and capabilities such as APIs, mobility of hardware, and customer service. We believe leading with our unique capabilities and brand—not price—is what drives larger sellers to select Square.

We celebrated a Square Capital milestone in September, surpassing $1 billion in total originations since launch in 2014. For the third quarter, we processed over 35,000 business loans totaling $208 million, an increase of approximately 70% year over year, while maintaining low loss rates at approximately 4%.

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SEC EDGAR Filing
SEC EDGAR · EX-99.1
Square, Inc. · EX-99.1 · filed 2016-11-01 · Accession 0001193125-16-755336
November 1, 2016
Public domain
View the primary source →