Latest news with #Block
The Star
3 days ago
- Business
- The Star
ConocoPhillips eyes investment in Sabah, reaffirms commitment to Malaysia
ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance KUALA LUMPUR: United States oil giant ConocoPhillips has set its sights on potential investments in Sabah while reaffirming its long-term commitment to Malaysia. Its chief executive officer, Ryan Lance, said the company is currently in discussions with Petroliam Nasional Bhd (PETRONAS) regarding investment opportunities in the country. "We are going to invest in Sabah going forward, and we are exploring many opportunities with PETRONAS,' he told Bernama after participating in a Leadership Dialogue session titled "Gas and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG): Investing for the Long Term" here today. The session, held as part of Energy Asia 2025, also featured other panellists, including PETRONAS Gas and Maritime executive vice president and chief executive officer Datuk Adif Zulkifli, and was moderated by S&P Global senior vice president and chief energy strategist Dr Atul Arya. ConocoPhillips had announced on April 30 that it had exited from operating the Salam-Patawali deepwater oil and gas field, also known as Block WL4-00, off Sarawak's coast. The field, discovered jointly with PETRONAS in 2018, was developed under a 50:50 joint venture valued at about RM13.7 billion (US$3.13 billion). The company, in a brief statement, said that the withdrawal was part of a "country strategy review', without further elaboration. According ConocoPhillips website, the company is engaged in various stages of exploration, development, and production activities across Malaysia, with working interests in five production sharing contracts (PSCs). Four of these PSCs are located in waters off the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah: Block G, Block J, the Kebabangan Cluster and the Ubah Cluster, which was acquired in 2024. Meanwhile, during the leadership dialogue, Lance said ConocoPhillips remains confident about its prospects in the LNG sector and is ready to develop more LNG projects. Responding to a question on the emerging trend of longer-term LNG contracts, Lance noted that a mixed approach is emerging, with some multi-decade deals taking place in Qatar. "Generally, customers want flexibility, shorter-term contracts with some destination flexibility. But it remains to be seen whether the developer, purchaser, or seller of the LNG will offer that kind of flexibility. "That kind of optionality will be key to accessing arbitrage opportunities across global importing regions,' he said. Asked whether LNG pricing poses a barrier to entry into the Asian market, Lance said ConocoPhillips maintains a long-term, constructive view on pricing. "There will be ups and downs, as there always are in this business, but overall the outlook remains positive over the long term,' he added. - Bernama
Globe and Mail
3 days ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
MA, V, or XYZ: Which Fintech Stock Is Wall Street's Best Pick?
Macro uncertainty, geopolitical concerns, and increased competition could impact consumer spending and weigh on the performance of fintech stocks. Last week, fears about retail giants considering the launch of their own stablecoins dragged down stocks of fintech giants. Nonetheless, analysts believe in the resilience of several fintech stocks. With this backdrop in mind, we used TipRanks' Stock Comparison Tool to place Mastercard (MA), Visa (V), and Block (XYZ) against each other to find the best fintech stock, according to Wall Street analysts. Confident Investing Starts Here: Mastercard (NYSE:MA) Mastercard boasts a vast payments network and a solid brand name. MA stock has risen about 8% so far in 2025. The payments processing behemoth reported a 9% growth in its gross dollar volume (on a local currency basis) to $2.4 trillion in the first quarter of 2025. The company is focused on innovation to drive further growth. It launched Mastercard Agent Pay, its new Agentic Payments Program, and will work with companies like Microsoft (MSFT) and OpenAI. Mastercard has also entered into a strategic partnership with Corpay to offer an enhanced suite of corporate cross-border payment solutions. Mastercard sees its value-added services, which complement its core payments network, as a key growth driver. Interestingly, 85% of the company's value-added services and solutions revenues are recurring in nature, presenting a stable baseline for growth. Despite ongoing macro challenges, Mastercard remains confident about delivering a resilient performance, supported by its diversified business model. Is Mastercard Stock a Good Buy? On Friday, Visa and Mastercard stocks declined 5% each in reaction to a Wall Street Journal report that retail giants Amazon (AMZN) and Walmart (WMT) are exploring issuing their own stablecoins to shift high volumes of transactions outside the traditional financial system and save billions of dollars in fees. Reacting to the news, Barclays analyst Ramsey El Assal reiterated a Buy rating on Mastercard stock with a price target of $650 and a Buy rating on Visa stock with a price target of $396. While Assal sees notable potential in stablecoin technology and remains optimistic about its broader applications, he believes retail payments will be a challenging area for adoption. He contends that the concerns about the impact on Visa and Mastercard are exaggerated. Assal stated that he views any related weakness as a buying opportunity. With 20 Buys and three Holds, Mastercard stock scores a Strong Buy consensus rating. At $639.10, the average MA stock price target indicates 12.4% upside potential from current levels. See more MA analyst ratings Visa (NYSE:V) Payments processing giant Visa delivered a resilient performance in the March quarter despite a challenging macro backdrop. The company reported market-beating results for the second quarter of Fiscal 2025 (ended March 31, 2025), with payments volume rising 7.5% (constant currency basis) to $3.34 trillion. Visa's Q2 FY25 revenue was supported by strength in cross-border volume and processed transactions. Despite macro challenges, the company is confident about generating solid performance, driven by its strategy across key offerings, a diversified business model, and a focus on innovation. Is Visa Stock a Buy, Sell, or Hold? Following a Wall Street Journal article on Amazon (AMZN) and Walmart's (WMT) potential issue of their own stablecoins, William Blair analyst Andrew Jeffrey encouraged investors to accumulate shares of Visa and Mastercard on pullback, as he does not believe that stablecoins are well suited for B2C commerce, even as merchants view them as a potential means of lowering card acceptance costs. Jeffrey's opinion is backed by three reasons. Firstly, consumers are habituated to the ease of use and security of traditional cards. Secondly, there is no stablecoin standard. Lastly, Visa and Mastercard are building stablecoin infrastructure that can support commerce on their platforms, which can help them to continue partnering with banks for issuance while bringing down merchants' acceptance costs. Overall, Visa stock scores a Strong Buy consensus rating based on 24 Buys and four Holds. The average VISA stock price target of $388.85 indicates 9.4% upside potential from current levels. VISA stock has risen about 12.5% so far this year. Block (NYSE:XYZ) Fintech company Block operates two ecosystems: Square for addressing merchants' financial needs and Cash App for peer-to-peer payments. It is also growing its Bitcoin (BTC-USD) platform and recently announced the launch of Bitcoin payments on Square. XYZ stock has risen 12.4% over the past month, but is still down about 24% so far in 2025 due to concerns over a slowdown in growth amid intense competition. Last month, Block reported dismal earnings for the first quarter of 2025 and lowered its full-year gross profit outlook, citing weak consumer spending due to macro woes and lower-than-anticipated inflows in what is generally seen to be a strong tax refund season. In the Q1 shareholder letter, management mentioned the recent deceleration in growth and stated that they expect Cash App gross profit growth and overall Block gross profit growth to 'significantly accelerate' starting in the third quarter. The company said that it expects the rollout of Cash App Borrow to more customers and an increase in Borrow limits to drive gross profit growth through increased originations and enhanced unit economics. Is XYZ Stock a Good Buy? Earlier this month, Evercore analyst Adam Frisch upgraded Block Stock to Buy from Hold and increased the price target to $75 from $58. Frisch thinks that the initial concerns around Block's aggressive lending following its first-quarter earnings have eased. He believes that the company's lending strategy is more balanced than feared, given a diversified risk profile and controlled expansion, especially within Cash App Borrow. Frisch also noted that low-end consumer spending remains stable, supported by steady unemployment deposits and steady payment activity. The analyst noted recent product launches at Square, including new hardware and a consolidated app, as favorable indications of development efficiency following an internal reorganization. He expects the revamped sales efforts and product improvements to drive Square's growth. Frisch thinks that XYZ stock is attractively valued compared to its peers and historical multiples. Turning to Wall Street, Block stock scores a Moderate Buy consensus rating based on 29 Buys, eight Holds, and two Sell recommendations. The average XYZ stock price target of $66.25 indicates a modest upside potential of 2.2% from current levels. See more XYZ analyst ratings Conclusion Wall Street is bullish on Visa and Mastercard stocks and cautiously optimistic on Block. Analysts see a slightly higher upside potential in Mastercard stock than in Visa stock. They are confident about continued growth in Mastercard, driven by its extensive network, dominant position, innovation, and strength in value-added services.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Block's CFO explains Gen Z's surprising approach to money management
One stock recently impacted by a whirlwind of volatility is Block—the fintech powerhouse behind Square, Cash App, Tidal Music, and more. The company's COO and CFO, Amrita Ahuja, shares how her team is using new AI tools to find opportunity amid disruption and reach customers left behind by traditional financial systems. Ahuja also shares lessons from the video game industry and discusses Gen Z's surprising approach to money management. Pentagon Pizza Index: The theory that surging pizza orders signal global crises What is a fridge cigarette? The viral Diet Coke trend explained 5 signals that make you instantly more trustworthy at work This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Robert Safian, former editor-in-chief of Fast Company. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today's top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. This embedded content is not available in your region. As a leader, when you're looking at all of this volatility—the tariffs, consumer sentiment's been unclear, the stock market's been all over the place. You guys had a huge one-day drop in early May, and it quickly bounced back. How do you make sense of all these external factors? Yeah, our focus is on what we can control. And ultimately, the thing that we are laser-focused on for our business is product velocity. How quickly can we start small with something, launch something for our customers, and then test and iterate and learn so that ultimately, that something that we've launched scales into an important product? I'll give you an example. Cash App Borrow, which is a product where our customers can get access to a line of credit, often $100, $200, that bridges them from paycheck to paycheck. We know so many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. That's a product that we launched about three years ago and have now scaled to serve 9 million actives with $15 billion in credit supply to our customers in a span of a couple short years. The more we can be out testing and launching product at a pace, the more we know we are ultimately delivering value to our customers, and the right things will happen from a stock perspective. Block is a financial services provider. You have Square, the point-of-sale system; the digital wallet Cash App, which you mentioned, which competes with Venmo and Robinhood; and a bunch of others. Then you've got the buy-now, pay-later leader Afterpay. You chair Square Financial Services, which is Block's chartered bank. But you've said that in the fintech world, Block is only a little bit fin—that comparatively, it's more tech. Can you explain what you mean by that? What we think is unique about us is our ability as a technology company to completely change innovation in the space, such that we can help solve systemic issues across credit, payments, commerce, and banking. What that means ultimately is we use technologies like AI and machine learning and data science, and we use these technologies in a unique way, in a way that's different from a traditional bank. We are able to underwrite those who are often frankly forgotten by the traditional financial ecosystems. Our Square Loans product has almost triple the rate of women-owned businesses that we underwrite. Fifty-eight percent of our loans go to women-owned businesses versus 20% for the industry average. For that Cash App Borrow product I was talking about, 70% of those actives, the 9 million actives that we underwrote, fell below 580 as a FICO score. That's considered a poor FICO score, and yet 97% of repayments are made on time. And this is because we have unique access to data and these technology and tools which can help us uniquely underwrite this often forgotten customer base. Yeah. I mean, credit—sometimes it's been blamed for financial excesses. But access to credit is also, as you say, an advantage that's not available to everyone. Do you have a philosophy between those poles—between risk and opportunity? Or is what you're saying is that the tech you have allows you to avoid that risk? That's right. Let's start with how do the current systems work? It works using inferior data, frankly. It's more limited data. It's outdated. Sometimes it's inaccurate. And it ignores things like someone's cash flows, the stability of your income, your savings rate, how money moves through your accounts, or how you use alternative forms of credit—like buy now, pay later, which we have in our ecosystem through Afterpay. We have a lot of these signals for our 57 million monthly actives on the Cash App side and for the 4 million small businesses on the Square side, and those, frankly, billions of transaction data points that we have on any given day paired with new technologies. And we intend to continue to be on the forefront of AI, machine learning, and data science to be able to empower more people into the economy. The combination of the superior data and the technologies is what we believe ultimately helps expand access. You have a financial background, but not in the financial services industry. Before Block, you were a video game developer at Activision. Are financial businesses and video games similar? Are there things that are similar about them? There are. There actually are some things that are similar, I will say. There are many things that are unique to each industry. Each industry is incredibly complex. You find that when big technology companies try to do gaming. They've taken over the world in many different ways, but they can't always crack the nut on putting out a great game. Similarly, some of the largest technology companies have dabbled in fintech but haven't been able to go as deep, so they're both very nuanced and complex industries. I would say another similarity is that design really matters. Industrial design, the design of products, the interface of products, is absolutely mission-critical to a great game, and it's absolutely mission-critical to the simplicity and accessibility of our products, be it on Square or Cash App. And then maybe the third thing that I would say is that when I was in gaming, at least the business models were rapidly changing from an intermediary distribution mechanism, like releasing a game once and then selling it through a retailer, to an always-on, direct-to-consumer connection. And similarly with banking, people don't want to bank from 9 to 5, six days a week. They want 24/7 access to their money and the ability to, again, grow their financial livelihood, move their money around seamlessly. So, some similarities are there in that shift to an intermediary model or a slower model to an always-on, direct-to-consumer connection. Part of your target audience or your target customer base at Block are Gen Z folks. Did you learn things at Activision about Gen Z that has been useful? Are there things that businesses misunderstand about younger generations still? What we've learned is that Gen Z, millennial customers, aren't going to do things the way their parents did. Some of our stats show that 63% of Gen Z customers have moved away from traditional credit cards, and over 80% are skeptical of them. Which means they're not using a credit card to manage expenses; they're using a debit card, but then layering on on a transaction-by-transaction basis. Or again, using tools like buy now, pay later, or Cash App Borrow, the means in which they're managing their consistent cash flows. So that's an example of how things are changing, and you've got to get up to speed with how the next generation of customers expects to manage their money. This post originally appeared at to get the Fast Company newsletter:
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Visa Is One of the Largest Financial Companies by Market Cap. But Is It a Buy?
Thanks to incredible financial performance that has propelled the stock, Visa's current market cap is a massive $725 billion. The rise of various fintech enterprises hasn't hindered Visa's success, as they all spur adoption of digital payments. Investors seeking monster returns should practice patience. 10 stocks we like better than Visa › Annual global gross domestic product (GDP) now totals in the ballpark of $110 trillion. It's not a surprise that with so much economic activity, leading businesses dealing with anything related to financial services should also be extremely valuable. The proof is in the numbers. There's no shortage of massive financial enterprises carrying huge market caps. For instance, Visa (NYSE: V) is currently worth a jaw-dropping $725 billion. It's without a doubt one of the largest companies on the face of the planet. But is this stock, which has soared 36% in the past 12 months (as of June 12), a smart buy right now? Here's what investors need to know. Perhaps the best word to describe this year is "uncertainty." Ongoing trade negotiations have spurred fears about a recession. We saw this play out with the market tanking earlier in 2025, although it has recovered nicely. Investors are smart to think that this unfavorable economic backdrop should probably have a negative effect on companies' financial performance. But here's where Visa stands out. During the fiscal 2025 second quarter (ended March 31), the dominant payment platform posted 9% year-over-year revenue growth. This was driven by strong cross-border volume, which has been a usual occurrence. "Consumer spending remained resilient, even with macroeconomic uncertainty," CEO Ryan McInerney said. This is one of the most profitable businesses. Visa's net profit margin was 48% in Q2, and in the past five years, it has averaged a stellar 52%. Running a scaled payment network is proving to be an extremely lucrative endeavor. Looking ahead, investors have every reason to be optimistic that the growth will continue. Visa benefits from the rising adoption of digital payments, at the expense of cash and paper-based methods. And as the economy expands, so does spending activity. This all helps Visa handle more payment volume, which was $3.9 trillion in the most recent fiscal quarter. Just because there are massive financial businesses, it doesn't mean younger rivals can't emerge. In the past decade, fintech companies have found success by leveraging technology to offer exceptional user experiences to their customers. Just in the payments industry, PayPal, Block, Adyen, and Shopify come to mind. You would think that these smaller businesses would make a serious dent in Visa's operations. However, this hasn't been the case. Since Visa is so ingrained in global commerce, the rise of fintech enterprises can be viewed as driving more usage of the card giant's platform. That's because they make it even easier to adopt cashless transactions. Moreover, Visa's powerful network effect makes its competitive position virtually unassailable. The system works well for merchants, of which there are over 150 million plugged into the Visa network, and cardholders, who carry 4.8 billion Visa cards around the world. Both stakeholder groups appreciate the convenience and security Visa offers, not to mention how ubiquitous the network is. Unless a new system pops up that's 10 times better than what's available now, I'm fairly confident Visa will not only stay relevant but will continue to lead the payments landscape well into the future. Shares of Visa have crushed the S&P 500 in the past decade, producing a total return of nearly 500%. But I'm not sure this outperformance will continue as we look ahead. The company's massive size gets in the way. Valuation is another key component that investors must factor into their decision-making process. Visa stock trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of 37.4. This represents a premium to the trailing five- and 10-year averages. Investors who want huge returns should wait for a sizable pullback. Before you buy stock in Visa, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Visa wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $653,702!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $870,207!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 988% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025 Neil Patel has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Adyen, Block, PayPal, Shopify, and Visa. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2027 $42.50 calls on PayPal and short June 2025 $77.50 calls on PayPal. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Visa Is One of the Largest Financial Companies by Market Cap. But Is It a Buy? was originally published by The Motley Fool
Fast Company
5 days ago
- Business
- Fast Company
Block's CFO explains Gen Z's surprising approach to money management
One stock recently impacted by a whirlwind of volatility is Block—the fintech powerhouse behind Square, Cash App, Tidal Music, and more. The company's COO and CFO, Amrita Ahuja, shares how her team is using new AI tools to find opportunity amid disruption and reach customers left behind by traditional financial systems. Ahuja also shares lessons from the video game industry and discusses Gen Z's surprising approach to money management. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Robert Safian, former editor-in-chief of Fast Company. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today's top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. As a leader, when you're looking at all of this volatility—the tariffs, consumer sentiment's been unclear, the stock market's been all over the place. You guys had a huge one-day drop in early May, and it quickly bounced back. How do you make sense of all these external factors? Yeah, our focus is on what we can control. And ultimately, the thing that we are laser-focused on for our business is product velocity. How quickly can we start small with something, launch something for our customers, and then test and iterate and learn so that ultimately, that something that we've launched scales into an important product? I'll give you an example. Cash App Borrow, which is a product where our customers can get access to a line of credit, often $100, $200, that bridges them from paycheck to paycheck. We know so many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. That's a product that we launched about three years ago and have now scaled to serve 9 million actives with $15 billion in credit supply to our customers in a span of a couple short years. The more we can be out testing and launching product at a pace, the more we know we are ultimately delivering value to our customers, and the right things will happen from a stock perspective. Block is a financial services provider. You have Square, the point-of-sale system; the digital wallet Cash App, which you mentioned, which competes with Venmo and Robinhood; and a bunch of others. Then you've got the buy-now, pay-later leader Afterpay. You chair Square Financial Services, which is Block's chartered bank. But you've said that in the fintech world, Block is only a little bit fin—that comparatively, it's more tech. Can you explain what you mean by that? What we think is unique about us is our ability as a technology company to completely change innovation in the space, such that we can help solve systemic issues across credit, payments, commerce, and banking. What that means ultimately is we use technologies like AI and machine learning and data science, and we use these technologies in a unique way, in a way that's different from a traditional bank. We are able to underwrite those who are often frankly forgotten by the traditional financial ecosystems. Our Square Loans product has almost triple the rate of women-owned businesses that we underwrite. Fifty-eight percent of our loans go to women-owned businesses versus 20% for the industry average. For that Cash App Borrow product I was talking about, 70% of those actives, the 9 million actives that we underwrote, fell below 580 as a FICO score. That's considered a poor FICO score, and yet 97% of repayments are made on time. And this is because we have unique access to data and these technology and tools which can help us uniquely underwrite this often forgotten customer base. Yeah. I mean, credit—sometimes it's been blamed for financial excesses. But access to credit is also, as you say, an advantage that's not available to everyone. Do you have a philosophy between those poles—between risk and opportunity? Or is what you're saying is that the tech you have allows you to avoid that risk? That's right. Let's start with how do the current systems work? It works using inferior data, frankly. It's more limited data. It's outdated. Sometimes it's inaccurate. And it ignores things like someone's cash flows, the stability of your income, your savings rate, how money moves through your accounts, or how you use alternative forms of credit—like buy now, pay later, which we have in our ecosystem through Afterpay. We have a lot of these signals for our 57 million monthly actives on the Cash App side and for the 4 million small businesses on the Square side, and those, frankly, billions of transaction data points that we have on any given day paired with new technologies. And we intend to continue to be on the forefront of AI, machine learning, and data science to be able to empower more people into the economy. The combination of the superior data and the technologies is what we believe ultimately helps expand access. You have a financial background, but not in the financial services industry. Before Block, you were a video game developer at Activision. Are financial businesses and video games similar? Are there things that are similar about them? There are. There actually are some things that are similar, I will say. There are many things that are unique to each industry. Each industry is incredibly complex. You find that when big technology companies try to do gaming. They've taken over the world in many different ways, but they can't always crack the nut on putting out a great game. Similarly, some of the largest technology companies have dabbled in fintech but haven't been able to go as deep, so they're both very nuanced and complex industries. I would say another similarity is that design really matters. Industrial design, the design of products, the interface of products, is absolutely mission-critical to a great game, and it's absolutely mission-critical to the simplicity and accessibility of our products, be it on Square or Cash App. And then maybe the third thing that I would say is that when I was in gaming, at least the business models were rapidly changing from an intermediary distribution mechanism, like releasing a game once and then selling it through a retailer, to an always-on, direct-to-consumer connection. And similarly with banking, people don't want to bank from 9 to 5, six days a week. They want 24/7 access to their money and the ability to, again, grow their financial livelihood, move their money around seamlessly. So, some similarities are there in that shift to an intermediary model or a slower model to an always-on, direct-to-consumer connection. Part of your target audience or your target customer base at Block are Gen Z folks. Did you learn things at Activision about Gen Z that has been useful? Are there things that businesses misunderstand about younger generations still? What we've learned is that Gen Z, millennial customers, aren't going to do things the way their parents did. Some of our stats show that 63% of Gen Z customers have moved away from traditional credit cards, and over 80% are skeptical of them. Which means they're not using a credit card to manage expenses; they're using a debit card, but then layering on on a transaction-by-transaction basis. Or again, using tools like buy now, pay later, or Cash App Borrow, the means in which they're managing their consistent cash flows. So that's an example of how things are changing, and you've got to get up to speed with how the next generation of customers expects to manage their money.
