Block Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Square Four Quarter 2021 earnings conference call. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Jason Lee, head of investor relations. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining our first quarter 2021 earnings call. We have Jack and Ramita with us today. 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 our customers in addition to questions from conference call participants. We would like to remind everyone that we will be making forward-looking statements on this call. Actual results could differ materially from those contemplated by our forward-looking statements. Report results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. Please take a look at our findings with the SEC for discussion of factors that could cause our results to differ. Also, note that the forward-looking statements on this call are based on information available to us as of today's date. We disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except those required by law. During this call, we will provide preliminary gross profit growth results for the month of April. These represent our current estimate for April performance as we have not yet closed our accounting financials for the month of April, and our monthly results are not subject to interim review by our auditors. As a result, actual April results may differ from these estimates. 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 on our investor relations website. These non-GAAP measures are not intended to be a substitute for our GAAP results. Finally, the call in its entirety is being audio webcast on our Investor Relations website. An audio replay of this call will be available on our website shortly. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Jack.

Thanks, Jason. Thank you all for joining us. We continue to focus on helping our customers through COVID-19, as many states in the U.S. and countries we serve reopened. With that focus in mind, this quarter we again participated in the Paycheck Protection Program, enabling us to facilitate more than $1.4 billion in loans to date, $531 million in the first quarter, to small businesses across the U.S., the vast majority of which were selling with less than five employees. Square Financial Services, our newly opened bank, will eventually allow us to expand access to banking services to many more small businesses. We also made government disbursements available to individuals through Cash App, enabling access to these funds up to two days early. We saw customers spending across the platform on critical needs such as rent, car payments, food, and utility bills. Now a few updates on our business before I turn to Amrita and your questions. We launched Square Messages this quarter, a new feature in our seller ecosystem that will officially connect sellers with their buyers through text or email. Square Messages is accessible from sellers' online Square dashboard and consolidates communications with buyers from Square feedback, Square receipts, and Square appointments in one place. Now buyers can simply text or email to sellers regarding their latest purchases or upcoming appointments, and sellers can respond while keeping their attention on the business. Consumers and sellers have both expressed interest in being able to message each other directly, and we believe this will help deepen the relationship and ultimately grow sales. Our omni-channel efforts have enabled us to attract and retain larger sellers, too. Larger sellers come to Square for the breadth of our ecosystem, including our vertical point-of-sale products. Sellers who use Square for restaurants or Square for retail have adopted more than three of our products on average and generated greater than 5x the gross profit compared to the average seller in the first quarter. Within Cash App this quarter, we launched Bitcoin peer-to-peer functionality. Customers can now send Bitcoin to friends and family for free within the app, which has attracted new customers to Bitcoin. This gives even more opportunities to build new network effects across the entire cash ecosystem. We've also found purposeful opportunities to connect seller and cash. This quarter, we incorporated Square Loyalty into Cash App to drive customer discovery, engagement, and retention, while also deepening the connection between buyers and sellers. The integration allows for a richer customer experience with Square buyers to view and manage rewards using Cash App. It enables Cash App to reach and engage tens of millions of buyers using Square loyalty. These sorts of integrations are only possible because we have scaled ecosystems for both sellers and individuals, and we're excited about the opportunity for future connections. Lastly, we closed the transaction to acquire a majority ownership stake in title, and JV has joined Square's board of directors. We believe there's a compelling intersection between music and the economy. Making the economy work for artists is similar to what Square has done for Sellots. We're gonna start small and focus on the most critical needs of artists and growing their fan bases. We're really enthusiastic to finally be able to start this work. With that, over to Amrita.