Block allows consumers and businesses to pay each other.
Courtesy Block
Shares in payments platform
Block
fell early Wednesday after analysts at
Oppenheimer
downgraded the stock to Perform from Outperform.
Block
(ticker: SQ), started by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and previously known as Square, slipped 3.8% to $77.76 in premarket trading. It’s still up more than 30% over the past month.
“We don’t believe we have seen the bottom in stocks and thus we could see the recent SQ rally evaporate,” analyst Dominick Gabriele wrote in a Jan. 24 note. It will probably be difficult for Block to protect its earnings in a downturn, he said.
Block is still trading some 27% below levels from a year ago. It was swept up in the great technology-company selloff of 2022 as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates at the fastest pace in a generation, hammering high-growth stocks.
The company didn’t immediately return a request for comment early on Wednesday.
Write to Brian Swint at brian.swint@barrons.com
Credit: marketwatch.com