Earnings Labs

Block, Inc. (XYZ)

Q4 2025 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 26, 2026

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining our fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. Today's call will be 45 minutes. We have Jack and Amrita with us today, along with Owen Jennings, our business lead; and Nick Molnar, our Sales and Marketing Lead for Block. We will begin this call with some short remarks before opening the call directly to your questions. During Q&A, we will take questions from conference call participants. We would also like to remind everyone that we will be making forward-looking statements on this call. All statements other than statements of historical facts could be considered to be forward-looking. These forward-looking statements include discussions of our outlook, strategy and guidance as well as our long-term targets and goals and how we plan to operate moving forward. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, including changes in macroeconomic conditions and risks related to the workforce reduction we announced earlier today. Actual results could differ materially from those contemplated by our forward-looking statements. Reported results should not be considered an indication of future performance. Please take a look at our filings with the SEC for a discussion of the factors that could cause our results to differ. Also note that the forward-looking statements, including earnings guidance for 2026 and our future operating plans discussed on this call are based on information available to us and assumptions we believe are reasonable as of today's date. We disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. Further, any discussion during this call of our lending and banking products refer to products that are offered through Square Financial Services or our bank partners. Within these remarks, we will also discuss metrics related to our investment framework, including Rule of 40. With Rule of 40, we are evaluating the sum of our gross profit growth and adjusted operating income margin. Also, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures during this call. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are provided in the shareholder letter. These non-GAAP measures are not intended to be a substitute for our GAAP results. Finally, this call in its entirety is being audio webcast on our Investor Relations website. An audio replay of this call and the transcript for Jack and Amrita's opening remarks will be available on our website shortly. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Jack.

Jack Dorsey

Management

Thank you all for joining us. Today, we shared a difficult decision with our team. We're reducing Block from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. I said everything I needed to say to our team in an e-mail posted to Twitter. So please read it if you'd like. What I want to talk to you about now is why I believe this is the right path for our company and what Block looks like going forward. We're making this change after delivering one of our strongest years. We set clear priorities for the year, and we executed on all of them. In 2025, gross profit growth more than doubled from the first quarter to the fourth quarter. We surpassed Rule of 40 in the fourth quarter. We reignited Cash App network growth and engagement. We scaled our lending products and delivered strong returns. We accelerated Square GPV growth and had our strongest new volume added year on record. We shipped our first Proto units, and we increased share repurchases to return more capital to shareholders. We have conviction in achieving the long-term financial targets we laid out at Investor Day and are meaningfully raising our initial outlook for 2026. We know how to grow this business, and this decision today is a choice about how we operate it going forward. The core thesis is simple. Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company. We're already seeing it internally. A significantly smaller team using the tools we're building can do more and do it better. And intelligence tool capabilities are compounding faster every single week. I don't think we're early to this realization. I think most companies are late. Within the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and…

Amrita Ahuja

Management

Thanks, Jack, and thank you all for joining. The organizational changes we're sharing today represent a deliberate choice about Block's next phase of growth. The decision impacts many employees who played an important role in building Block, and we're deeply grateful for their contributions. As Jack mentioned, we're making this change after delivering a strong year across the business. In the fourth quarter, we outperformed our guidance across gross profit, adjusted operating income and adjusted EPS, translating product velocity into strong financial performance. Block generated $2.87 billion in gross profit, representing 24% year-over-year growth. And we grew adjusted operating income 46% year-over-year to $588 million, delivering 3 points of margin expansion even as we invested in initiatives with strong ROIs that we expect to drive future growth. On a per share basis, we grew adjusted diluted EPS 38% year-over-year. We repurchased $790 million of shares in the fourth quarter, bringing our total for 2025 to $2.3 billion. We exceeded Rule of 40 in Q4, and we believe we're on track to sustain it on an annual basis moving forward. Stepping back, 2025 was a pivotal year for Block. Gross profit growth more than doubled from the first quarter to the fourth quarter, leading to $10.36 billion in gross profit for the full year and growth of 17% year-over-year. Even with additional investment in go-to-market, we grew adjusted operating income 30% year-over-year in 2025, delivering 2 points of margin expansion. Cash App monthly actives returned to growth in the second half of 2025, ending the year at $59 million, and we executed on our engagement strategies with primary banking actives growing 22% year-over-year to 9.3 million monthly actives in December. We grew consumer lending origination volume by 50% year-over-year in 2025, while sustaining strong margins and healthy risk loss performance. We…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Tien-Tsin Huang from JPMorgan.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analyst

Jack, I do want to ask a question to you, if you don't mind. And knowing you here, I'm sure you put a lot of heavy thought into this reduction in force. So I'd love to just hear a little bit more on why now? We're just, what, 3 months removed from Investor Day. So why are you ready to make this change now? And why is this the right level to run the company at?

Jack Dorsey

Management

Yes. There's a few things that have all been compounding towards this moment in this time. As you know, like we have been working very hard to functionalize the company. That's a big part of what gives us more confidence in making this move. We were operating a company with basically 2 companies with inside of it, both having their own structure, a lot of duplication. And as we functionalized, it allowed us to act more like one company and recognize where there are common capabilities and common foundation. And we're still doing a lot of that work, but I have the confidence that we're in a place that we can move much faster there. I also believe we were one of the first -- we were the first agentic harness out in the market. This is Goose. But something happened in December of last year, just last year, where the models just got in order of magnitude more capable and more intelligent. And it's really shown a path forward in terms of us being able to apply it to nearly every single thing that we do. So if there are any gaps in our usage of AI right now, it's an application gap. And I'm really confident that we can go through the majority of our organization, certainly our development, but the majority of our organization and apply these tools in a much stronger way that has the effect of allowing us to ship much faster to explore a lot of the paths much broader, so we can run the right experiments and get to the right answers and get feedback immediately for product market fit and ultimately to operate more and more of the company in a way that I think all companies will eventually go. I do…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Darrin Peller with Wolfe Research.

Darrin Peller

Analyst · Wolfe Research.

You can hear me okay?

Amrita Ahuja

Management

Loud and clear.

Darrin Peller

Analyst · Wolfe Research.

Okay. Great. Look, I mean, there were some very strong trends, especially in Cash App, considering users growing again, inflows per active growth accelerating double digits. And also on Square, we're seeing new sales helping with NVA accelerate nearly 30%. Just -- if you could just touch on what you think drives sustainable momentum across both the businesses and especially in light of the reduced headcount levels. Just want to touch on how you're sustaining this and how you really expect to sustain solid momentum like this as shown in your guidance, just again, just given the changes in the business.

Owen Jennings

Analyst · Wolfe Research.

Sure. I think we have a lot of conviction in our ability to sustain these durable growth rates. I think that there's 2 high-level ways to answer your question. The first is just around the org structure and the org size and what does that mean? And then the second probably is just from a product development and road map standpoint, how are we feeling? So on the org structure side, to reiterate some of what Jack was talking about, what we've seen is that smaller, more nimble teams have allowed us to move faster and actually get products into our customers' hands more quickly. With the moves today, we are eliminating some of the organizational debt or organizational overhang that has existed. We're also inherently increasing talent density across the org, including the development org. And obviously, we're getting all the benefits of the AI tools and the improvements in the foundational models, and that's flowing through to everything that we're doing, particularly on the software development side. So I'd say, overall, on the org structure and org side of things, we're feeling really confident, and we're actually feeling like this is going to help us execute more quickly and with more precision. On the second category, which is just product development road map and the growth levers that we have, again, we have really strong conviction in our road map and how that's going to flow through to gross profit growth. I think the clearest signal is, in my mind, it's the increase to the gross profit guide that we gave today. But I would tend to break this down into a few different categories. I think we have, first, just like the core network growth of Cash App and Square. Then we have key product launches that…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Ramsey El-Assal with Cantor Fitzgerald. Our next question comes from the line of Bryan Bergin with TD Cowen.

Bryan Bergin

Analyst · TD Cowen.

Hope you can hear me. I wanted to just follow up on the org changes and hoping you could talk more about how those changes today may flow through the financial outlook this year and potentially beyond. So I appreciate the cadence color. Just wanted to follow up on those cost impacts and how that may translate to where you can exit '26 on AOI. Any important free cash flow impacts to be mindful of as well there as you go through '26 and beyond? And just also where are the investment dollars shifting to from headcount?

Amrita Ahuja

Management

Bryan, it's Amrita. Happy to take the question. We'll start on sort of the cadence throughout the year around AOI and maybe even before that, starting on gross profit, and then we'll share some of the investment areas as well. So obviously, as you've heard, we've raised both our gross profit guidance from 17% growth at Investor Day for 26% to 18%, and meaningfully raised our adjusted operating income guidance. From a gross profit perspective, in terms of the pacing throughout the year, we expect a very strong Q1 with 22% gross profit growth. And we've been prudent in our tax season assumptions with that. We also expect to sustain strong gross profit growth throughout the year and end the year in the mid-teens gross profit growth range, in line with the longer-term Investor Day guidance we gave in the mid-teens as we look forward as well. From a profitability standpoint, we expect to grow AOI nearly 30% in this first quarter and expect margins, as I noted earlier, to expand throughout the year off of that Q1 21% margin range. Really, the reason for that margin expansion throughout the year is a couple of things. First, look, strong underlying unit economic strength in the business and incremental margins driving that leverage. Second, timing of some of the cost structure changes. As I noted earlier, you'd see a less meaningful impact on the -- from the cost structure changes to our Q1 results given the timing in the quarter and the notice periods for employees outside the U.S. as well as seeing some of that notice period dynamic flow through into Q2. Timing related to sales and marketing spend, where we expect to see some meaningful increase in spend from Q1 to Q2, again, on the back of strong returns…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Dan Dolev with Mizuho.

Dan Dolev

Analyst · Mizuho.

So yes, I just wanted to ask about your primary banking actives, Amrita and Jack. I mean this looks like a very, very strong quarter, 1 million PBAs added, accelerating growth to almost 23% and these customers generate over 10x profit per active. So this sounds very excited. I remember you guys have talked about this as kind of the Holy Grail is adding the banking active. So I wanted to know kind of more what you're doing there and how exciting this one could be over time.

Owen Jennings

Analyst · Mizuho.

Thanks for the question, Dan. This is Owen. I can take the first crack at it. As you said, we're really, really excited about where primary banking actives came in, in Q4. As you know, we launched Cash App Green in November at Cash App Releases. And the whole concept around Green was to expand access to the banking benefits that we offer to customers. We used to only offer those benefits to direct deposit actives. Now, we have a broader understanding of how customers themselves see banking primacy. And so if customers are spending more than $500 a month on Cash App Card, they're eligible for Cash App Green and everything that comes with it. The results following the launch of Green were fantastic. So as you noted, 9.3 million primary banking actives in December, growing 22%, up about 1 million from September. I think over and above the count of primary banking actives, it's actually the engagement that's most exciting. As you noted, gross profit per active is almost 10x what we see for a peer-to-peer only active. We've also seen since the launch of Green, cohort retention has improved for primary banking actives since we launched. And then we've seen incremental engagement across a number of different products and features on Cash App. For example, seeing incremental gross profit coming from Borrow, from Cash App Card, from Instant Deposit. And that's as you'd expect, as the Green program is really just an incredible incentive for customers to bring more and more of their financial life to Cash App. I think one good example, just showing the increase in engagement is on personalized offers. So for Green customers, we're giving personalized instant discounts on Cash App Card to those customers. Before we launched Green, we saw engagement or…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Jason Kupferberg with Wells Fargo.

Jason Kupferberg

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Really good to see that the Q1 GPV reaccelerated 12% quarter-to-date despite some of the weather events out there. There is an easy compare, though in Q1. So just wanted to get your sense of visibility on the full year guide there, which I believe is low to mid-teens. And maybe if you can just touch on the vertical trends that you've seen quarter-to-date, if there's been any variation in trajectory among the major verticals.

Amrita Ahuja

Management

I'll kick us off on some of the latest GPV trends and by vertical, and then I think Nick may add in on some of what we're seeing from a go-to-market perspective and how that inflects the curve in the future. If you take a step back, Jason, as we look across all of the updates and changes we've made from a product ecosystem to a distribution channel perspective, we believe the strategy that we've got in Square is paying off. When you look at the broader years of '24 versus '25, we accelerated GPV growth from 8.6% to 10%. We did see, of course, as you know, a moderation in the fourth quarter relative to the third quarter. Again, through Tuesday, year-to-date, we've seen GPV growth reaccelerate to over 12% and in the U.S. as well, accelerating to over 7.5%. Ultimately, in the key verticals of focus for us, we've seen really strong results. Food and beverage GPV up 16% year-over-year, mid-market sellers also exhibiting continued strong performance in the fourth quarter. And we now view an opportunity to bring the playbook that we've used successfully in food and beverage over the past 12, 18 months to other verticals within the Square ecosystem to drive further strength as well. And so as we look back at what we can deliver in '26, we continue to have conviction that we can accelerate GPV further in '26 relative to 2025. And again, that's on the back of some of the really continued progress that Nick and team are making from a new volume added perspective with our strongest year ever in 2025. But I'll turn it to you, Nick, to share more on that.

Nicholas Molnar

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Yes. Thanks, Amrita. Look, as NVA continues to grow and has seen acceleration in '25, it does illustrate that it will build compounding cohort curves and only contribute more meaningfully in terms of GPV growth over the course of 2026. We did a lot of great work in 2025. As Amrita mentioned, we exited '25 with new volume added in Q4 above 29%. We saw very strong growth from a self-onboarded perspective and still 65% of our volume comes from our self-onboarded sellers, which is a real competitive advantage for Square. Marketing is still holding the [ 4 to 5 ] quarter payback period, which is highly efficient. We saw an even steeper acceleration from a sales perspective. Sales-led NVA in Q4 was up 62%, as was referenced in the opening remarks, which significantly exceeded the 40% growth target that we spoke about late last year. We've stayed very focused on the marginal ROI as we've scaled our field sales team and our telesales team and our investment has been successful. We had 15 U.S.-based sales reps in Q1. We're now over 140 by year-end, and we just did our first deal in Australia and the U.K. through our field team. So seeing that continue to expand. Over 50% of our inbound leads for our field team is through our partnership channel in Q4. And particularly with Cisco, where we're seeing 80% growth in referrals quarter-over-quarter, we've really lifted our strategic relationship with them and seeing strong progress. And if I just look forward to 2026, our existing reps will continue to scale just given time in seat and many of them were ramping during the course of 2025. We scaled our independent sales organization partners to over 100. We have a great team leading that, and it's complementing our direct to sales motion and scaling across multiple geographies. And then as Owen mentioned, we're really seeing a lift in product velocity and quickly closing the gap from a competitive product set perspective. So 2025 is our strongest year ever in NVA, fueled by a transformed go-to-market motion across marketing, sales, partnerships, and I really expect that to continue to compound into 2026.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Will Nance with Goldman Sachs.

William Nance

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

I was wondering if you could talk on MAU growth. I think it came in a little bit stronger than what the Street was looking for, I think more or less in line with what you talked about on the Investor Day. So could you just remind us about how you're thinking about the growth algorithm in Cash App from an MAU perspective?

Owen Jennings

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Sure. Thanks. We're really happy with the growth in actives in the second half of last year and in particular, in Q4, in December. As you said, we hit 59 million monthly active accounts in December. That was up from 58 million in September. This was driven by a few different things, efforts across multiplayer money, network enhancements, our go-to-market motion and then also just our focus on teams in the next generation. So on the multiplayer money side, we had some key launches. We rolled out peer-to-peer on web. We're in the process of rolling out our new core payment flow. And that -- critically, that's connected to MoneyBot, and then it also is the flow that is built to support stablecoins. So continuing to tweak things there and get that rolled out to 100%. We also launched payment links, which just makes it easy to get paid into Cash App and you can send those links through text or DM or what have you. We continue the evergreen work on the network enhancement side, just making sure that we're reducing friction where we can and making Cash App easy and simple to use. Teens and families, we've continued to invest in as well. And then right now, we're working on expanding access to Cash App Cards and savings accounts for children who are 6 to 12 years old. Right now, the teens program is for those 13 to 17 years old, and we've seen strength where we can kind of grow with those individuals, and we expect it to be the same for children who are 6 to 12. And then marketing is obviously always on full funnel across all of the channels, how we think about incentives, how we think about rewards. I think critically, it's not just about the actives number itself. It's also about the quality of actives. So what we're seeing is higher engagement rates and higher attach rates for new actives. For instance, in December, 21% of new actives attached to a banking product, and that was up pretty meaningfully versus December of the previous year. So all in all, we feel good about the growth algorithm. There's a number of things that are contributing to actives growth. We feel confident in that low single-digit year-over-year growth number that we've given. There might be some wiggles month-to-month or quarter-to-quarter, but we're feeling really good about where we are. And of course, we're trying to do everything that we can to surpass those expectations.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Tim Chiodo with UBS.

Timothy Chiodo

Analyst · UBS.

Great. Let's shift gears a little bit. I want to talk about a new revenue stream. So Cash App Score recently was made available effectively as a service to other third-party lenders. You mentioned that this is early, but you're already having some good conversations with some third-party lenders. My understanding is they would effectively be buyers of this service and incorporating it into their own underwriting flows as maybe a part of a more holistic approach to underwriting. But the main point is, I was hoping you could talk a little bit about the revenue opportunity and the pricing model.

Owen Jennings

Analyst · UBS.

Tim, thanks for the question. I'll just set the stage a little bit before I get into the details. I think what we're seeing in the U.S. is a lot of consumers moving away from credit cards and moving toward other forms of payment, and that's especially true for younger individuals. And so a byproduct of this is that a decent share of the population is now basically anonymous to the legacy credit bureaus. But as time goes on, those folks are contributing more and more to the U.S. economy, and this is kind of the bet on the next generation and the modern earner that we've been talking about. But right now, to some extent, they're getting left out of the traditional credit model. On the flip side, meanwhile, we lent out $18.5 billion to consumers in Q4, and that number was up almost 70% year-over-year. We did that profitably. And we were able to do that largely because of the unique data that we have on our customers that we use to generate a unique Cash App credit score for each of our customers. So then now we're thinking through how do we leverage this credit score. I think the first step is that we're going to show the Cash App credit score to our customers. I think there's a couple of benefits there. First is just building transparent -- giving transparency and building trust with our customers. We also think this could be a meaningful driver of behavior, just incenting customers to engage more with Cash App in order to drive their credit score. I think second, to your point, we do intend to partner with certain third parties or allow third parties to buy credit score data from us. Since Investor Day, and we have a…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Schmidt with KeyBanc.

Andrew Schmidt

Analyst · KeyBanc.

I appreciate the move today. I got to ask on BNPL. A number of good comments there, momentum in Afterpay post-purchase, the new product that's rolling out in 2026. Just curious as a starting point, how 4Q came in versus expectations? And then how we should think about growth into 2026 across core Afterpay, post-purchase and then some of the newer products you're rolling out?

Nicholas Molnar

Analyst · KeyBanc.

Thanks for the question. I'm happy to take this question. So Firstly, when I think about buy now, pay later, I think about it more from the lens of our kind of commerce consortium. And I think that more appropriately represents what's going on in the market. It's no longer just about paying for. It's about pay now, paying for through our integrated merchant relationships, Afterpay on the Cash App Card, pay monthly. I think this is kind of the apples-to-apples view, and that's how we looked at it internally. As we've been kind of executing over the last period, we've been very focused on disciplined profitable growth for both Afterpay and Cash App [ will be as ] a focus for GPV and commerce volume was up 17% and consumer lending originations, as Owen mentioned, up 69% year-over-year, but really focused as well on being conscious from a risk loss perspective and scaling in the right way. For Afterpay specifically, we added large partners like Fanatics and Endeavour Group, which is the largest liquor retailer in Australia. Post-purchase buy now, pay later has continued to gain traction and is one of the fastest-growing products which is primarily net new customers to Afterpay. And then as Owen also mentioned, we're in the early days of rolling out pre-purchase Afterpay on the Cash App Card, which we started in February, enabling financing for eligible actives. And so I'm happy by what we're seeing from a buy now, pay later perspective. Cash App Pay as well. I know you didn't mention it, but it's important as part of this kind of commerce stack. It's continued to scale at a very meaningful pace, up 55% year-on-year and active surpassing 8 million in the fourth quarter. And when I look at these merchant partnerships, where we're seeing strong product market fit, new distribution opportunities like Instacart and Target. It provides a unique and simple on-ramp for Afterpay down the track, given we designed this from a single integration, single contract, single settlement perspective. And then to your question and point on 2026, I still believe there's a very large and growing TAM, and we're very well positioned to capture it. 90 million Americans are expected to use buy now, pay later in 2026 and volume doubling by 2031. And given Cash App's scaled customer base and particularly the scale of the Cash App Card, it's differentiated owned by us, and I'm really excited to see that continue to -- for us to continue taking that to market. So looking forward to the rest of 2026 and focus on our broader commerce performance.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Rayna Kumar with Oppenheimer.

Rayna Kumar

Analyst · Oppenheimer.

Just want to go back to Cash App Borrow for a second. Can you talk specifically about your expectations for Cash App Borrow growth in '26? And separately, how have loss rates trended in Borrow and with BNPL?

Amrita Ahuja

Management

Rayna, it's Amrita. Happy to see -- there's a little bit of feedback, okay, I think that's better. Yes, Borrow had an incredible quarter, as you saw, and we continue to be excited about the growth path for 2026 with Borrow. As I noted on the call, we expect to see even stronger growth in the first half of the year relative to the second half, and you'd see that flow through. What we've seen so far is that variable profit margins continue to be strong. And even the fourth quarter with the pretty astounding 223% year-over-year origination volume growth, 50% quarter-over-quarter growth, even with that, we saw variable profit margins in line with our targets across both new and mature cohorts despite that triple-digit origination growth. Really, as we think about what's driving that Borrow growth, I think we'll continue to drive growth as we head into '26. And there's really 2 big drivers. One is, as you know, we've transitioned Borrow loan origination to SFS. And SFS is now fully -- this is our Bank Square Financial Services. SFS is now fully originating all Borrow loans. And with that, we have both improved unit economics on Borrow loans and new states that we can expand into. And that expansion is underway, but we see an opportunity to go much further there. And so that is a big driver, that expansion across new states and the improved unit economics is a big driver of the growth that you've seen in Q4, and we'd expect to see in '26. The second big thing is the deep integration of Borrow into this broader Cash App ecosystem and in particular, with our program around Cash App Green. In the fourth quarter, we leaned into those Borrow loans. We know that they're so attractive to the modern earner. And we saw a lot of success where customers were excited to either get their first Borrow loan or get a higher limit as they became a Cash App Green customer. When we think if you step back again and think about Borrow, it is an important element for the modern earner and how they can address the variability in their income. These many customers have cited to us, they seek flexibility and Borrow provides that for them as they think about those periods in between paychecks. And that's really a primary driver here for why they would take out a Borrow loan and why we've seen such astounding product market fit across our customer base here. And again, expanding Borrow rapidly, but still doing that responsibly, given the product design attributes and given the very, very strong underwriting models that we've built through our 15 years of understanding lending and really strong growth across each of the 2 businesses from a lending perspective. So that's really what's driven Borrow as we think about this past year and why we continue to expect strong momentum for Borrow into '26.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Ramsey El-Assal with Cantor Fitzgerald.

Ramsey El-Assal

Analyst

So AI, you guys have woven AI into obviously, a lot of the conversations having a transformative impact across your business. So I have a 2-parter. I guess, first, do you see AI as a new competitive vector where Block has an opportunity, maybe a rare opportunity to sort of leapfrog competitors or redefine the competitive landscape? I guess second, what gives you guys the right to win here? What are Block's competitive advantages in AI?

Jack Dorsey

Management

Yes. I do. So I think it goes back to those 4 things that we want to focus on right now in terms of what we build as a company. The first that sets us apart is all of our capabilities that we've built up over time. That's everything from our network and peer-to-peer. It's the fact that we can issue cards, that we can accept cards, that we can lend money to sellers and individuals. These are very, very hard to acquire as capabilities, and they're hard to maintain. And these are things that represent exact use cases that customers are coming to us in the first place for. When you pair that with the interface, we have a massive install interface on the Square side with our merchants. We have the same on the Cash App side through an app and the website. What we'll be able to do is compose these capabilities fluidly to deliver them to all of our customers in real time in a much more personalized way, in a way that they're going to feel like they can actually build their features and their functionality themselves. I think that's a significant advantage. I think the biggest advantage, though, is our understanding of our customers. We have an understanding of both sides of the counter. We have real-time data, which is very real transactional data, and we can connect it from the merchant to the consumer. And we can actually use that understanding to be a lot more proactive. Instead of our customers coming to our intelligence systems and knowing what question to ask and what to prompt the AI, we can actually prompt our customers, and we can do it in the right time so that they can have an experience where they have an intelligence system that is looking to protect their business and to protect their individual finances and help them along whatever goals they might have. And these are out today and something that we're going to continue to build on. And then finally, is making sure that we're using this intelligence, and we're building these world models to help us orchestrate the company much better and be a whole lot more efficient about how we work and how we deliver and how we ship. So I think all 4 of those together, I know all 4 of those together really set us apart. And a big part of the move we made today was to get us in position to do just that and to be ahead of our customers' expectations and to be ahead of the curve and actually being able to deliver that new functionality.

Operator

Operator

We will now take our last question from Bryan Keane with Citi.

Bryan Keane

Analyst

Amrita, the guidance for '26 today is above what was outlined at the Analyst Day. What does that mean for the 2028 targets of $15.5 billion in gross profit and adjusted EPS of [ $5.50 ], and I think it was $4 billion in free cash flow. What's the bridge that needs -- that you need now to get there? Or are those targets a little bit different?

Amrita Ahuja

Management

Bryan, thanks for the question. At the simplest level, what you're hearing from us today is we believe we have a path to accelerate the strategies we laid out at Investor Day. We've meaningfully raised our 2026 outlook, not just on profitability, but also on gross profit, showing that path to exiting this year still in that mid-teens growth range, which is really important as we think about heading into '27 and '28 because of the strong unit economics and incremental profitability in our business, that leads to that path of compounding profitability at a greater rate than gross profit. So while we're not updating our Investor Day targets on '27 and '28 today, what you see is a really credible and profitable path to delivering compounding profitability at meaningful scale in that '27, '28 view for our business, and we couldn't be more excited to get to work for 2026.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for participating in today's call. You may now disconnect.