---
title: A Bear Case Analysis Unpacking Block's Strategic Missteps, Stalled Growth, and Questionable Capital Allocation Decisions
created: 2025-12-06
updated: 2025-12-06
type: summary
tags: ["bear", "investment", "notes", "stock", "telegram"]
external: http://go/ui/posts/1674/
status: inbox
---

I spent a long time in this industry and follow Block stock for fun. Here's my non financial advice bear case dd:

-1. Jack is a nutbag.

2. They spent a ton of money buying a streaming music service (Tidal) so that Jack could hang out with Jay-Z and the shareholders sued. The quote from the judge was hilarious.

> “A board comprised of a majority of disinterested and independent directors is free to make a terrible business decision … without any meaningful threat of liability, so long as the directors approve the action in good faith.”

The judge basically called the leadership at Block idiots, but reminded shareholders that being an idiot isn't illegal yet.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/judge-dismisses-lawsuit-over-blocks-terrible-purchase-jay-zs-tidal-2023-05-09/

3. They threw a shit ton of their stock at the Afterpay acquisition which led to massive shareholder dilution and left them holding a giant bag of BNPL loans serving mostly sub-prime customers going into a recessionary environment. They are largely unqualified borrowers, they had until this year no ability to report these loans on credit reports, 41% of BNPL borrowers pay late as-is, and you can't repossess a pair of socks.

4. Their core business, taking margin on merchant transactions, is mostly lucrative in (a) the US and a select handful of other unregulated interchange markets (b) pretty much capped out in terms of growth and (c) all the profit is at the long tail anyways. They are growing top-line by serving larger companies which gooses their payment volume without contributing to transaction margin because the big guys have all the leverage. That's why they stopped reporting transaction margin like 5 years ago.

5. They were unable to build a competitor to Stripe for online payments that saw any traction.

6. They have had a very tough time growing Cash app.

7. They ideologically waste money on BTC mining initiatives that are chronically unprofitable. They built a friggin solar power plant they strapped miners onto.

8. They held a party for their employees so large ($68M) it showed up on their god damn quarterlies lmao.

https://switzer.com.au/the-experts/luke-hopewell/block-afterpays-earnings-were-thrown-off-by-a-massive-employee-only-party/

Block has and in most cases continues to be a payments processor, BNPL, streaming music service, food delivery company, bitcoin miner and solar farm operator. It's not easy to draw a through-line through these businesses that makes any sense.

They're a good business for what they are and pretty fairly valued in the $60-80 range, but the growth story is dead. I know a bunch of baggies so I hope I'm wrong but you're delusional if you think it's going to $180 in the next 6 months as that implies the highest market cap they ever had for all of like 2 weeks. Huge, sustained buybacks are their only path to stock appreciation.

Does $5B even offset stock-based comp?
