Block Inc. expects profit growth to accelerate over the next three years as Jack Dorsey’s payments firm anticipates launching products at a faster clip while doubling down on efforts to integrate its consumer-focused Cash App and merchant payment service Square.

In 2026, Block forecasts 17% gross profit growth year-over-year to $11.98 billion. The outlook marks an acceleration from the 15% year-over-year gross profit growth the financial technology company expects this year to $10.24 billion for all of 2025. The optimism is a reflection of greater operational efficiency brought on by organizational changes in recent years, Amrita Ahuja, Block’s chief financial and operating officer, said in an interview ahead of the firm’s investor presentation in San Francisco on Wednesday.

“We’ve made deliberate choices to run our company differently, run really as one company across Square and Cash App,” Ahuja said. “That’s transformed us.”

In addition, Block expects gross profit to grow in the mid-teens range through 2028, and to reach $15.8 billion. Of the 48 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg, 31 rate the stock a buy, 12 a hold and 5 have a sell recommendation.

“We like the stock, given strong GP growth (likely remains mid-teens in 2026),” David Koning, a senior research analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co., wrote in a note previewing the firm’s presentation, adding that there is strong potential for margin expansion and demonstrated return-on-investment on sales and marketing across Square and Cash App.

Block’s shares have fallen more than 30% this year amid wavering investor confidence in the firm’s ability to continue to scale across Square and Cash App. Cash App active users were stalled around 57 million active users for several consecutive quarters. In its most recent results, the company reported 58 million active users.

“We know that our business is complicated and we want to use this time to make sure that it’s much easier to understand going forward,” Dorsey, the co-founder and head of Block, said during the presentation.

In 2024, Block initiated a reorganization of the company designed to encourage collaboration across its different business lines. Instead of organizing around each unit, including Square and Cash App, teams would be organized by function: engineering, product, sales and more.

“We actually pitted these two organizations against each other in order to compete with one another and constantly raise the bar,” Dorsey said of the original organizational structure. “But in the end, we found that competition wasn’t serving our customers.”

With teams organized according to function, teams worked off a single prioritized roadmap and shared technical infrastructure, Ahuja said. As part of its efforts to focus on cost efficiency, Block announced a 12,000 staff cap in late 2023. At the time, the company had roughly 13,000 employees. Today, its headcount is fewer than 11,000 people and it plans to continue growing its business faster than its operating expenses, Ahuja noted.

Block has recently hosted a slate of product release events to display how the new structure is helping the business launch new products at a faster clip. The company is leaning heavily into artificial intelligence, introducing automated bots to help consumers and businesses manage their finances.

The aim for Square, which helps brick-and-mortar businesses accept payments, is selling to larger merchants with a focus on quick-service restaurants. On the Cash App side, the goal is to convert its 58 million peer-to-peer payments users into full-fledged banking clients. Block expects continued growth of its short-term loan product, Borrow, to be a significant profit driver in coming years.

In addition to scaling each business, Block is seeking to bridge the two ecosystems by incentivizing consumers to pay Square merchants directly from their Cash App balances. If successful, the service would provide an alternative to payment cards that often stoke complaints from merchants tired of paying card acceptance fees to issuing banks and networks like Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc.

Block is projecting adjusted operating income will grow to over $4.6 billion in 2028. Its adjusted earnings per share are expected to grow in the low 30% range annually through 2028 to $5.50. Block also noted a $5 billion increase to its share repurchase program.

Block is also aiming to popularize Bitcoin for everyday payments, reflecting Dorsey’s longtime conviction in the original cryptocurrency. In a recent shift, the company also added stablecoin support.

“We believe that generally we need another option for payments and Bitcoin represents that, stablecoins represents that as well,” Dorsey said, noting that the ultimate aim is to reduce dependency on the current financial system. “but we believe Bitcoin is the most open and the most neutral and the most independent and it’s something we really want to see become everyday money as quickly as possible.”

— By Emily Mason (Bloomberg News)