Jim Cramer weighs in on whether to buy Square’s stock

There is a difference between a broken stock and a broken company, and Square falls into the first category, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Wednesday.The fintech company’s stock, which had for years been one of the performers in the market, has been struggling mightily as of late. It’s fallen more than 20% since Aug. 1, when it was trading at $83 per share. It dropped below $60 on Wednesday.Still, the “Mad Money” host thinks Square isn’t a company to shy away from.”Square’s fundamentals are sound, so it’s a broken stock, not a broken company, which means you can absolutely buy this one into weakness,” Cramer said. “Worst case? It goes down some more and the stock gets even cheaper.”Square has fallen out of favor with investors after consecutive quarters of beating earnings and sales expectations, yet issuing conservative guidance for the upcoming quarter and leaving its full-year forecast unchanged, Cramer said.”Money managers were sick and tired of good quarters and then conservative guidance, which is why the stock dropped 14% the next day, and just kept falling,” Cramer said.Wall Street also has viewed Square more skeptically since its CFO Sarah Friar left to become CEO of Nextdoor, Cramer said. Friar made the announcement Oct. 10, and in January, Amrita Ahuja left Activision-Blizzard to replace her.”The stock did get eviscerated when Sarah left. Wall Street trusted her and that’s what mattered,” Cramer said. “I don’t want to put any disrespect to her successor … but analysts and institutional investors have become a lot more skeptical since Friar left.”While Cramer noted that many other fintech companies have gone out of style recently as quieter recession fears lead investors to return to established financials, Square’s troubles began before that, he said.”I think this is a management issue, but it’s really a cosmetic management issue so don’t get scared,” he said. Square’s CEO is Jack Dorsey, who also is the CEO of Twitter.Cramer said he used to call him a “part-time chief executive,” but that didn’t matter as long as Friar was there “keeping her eyes on the prize.”But Square’s core business is one that Cramer views as promising long-term. Square built a large payment network by offering small credit card readers that can turn smartphones into a point of sale terminal, Cramer noted.And it has used that network and the data it has gathered from it to build a rapidly growing money-lending operation called Square Capital, Cramer said.”No bank has that kind of insight into their borrowers,” Cramer said. “And since Square controls the payment system, if you borrow from them, they can just take the interest payments right out of your receipts.”In addition, Square operates a peer-to-peer payment app called the Cash App and recently sold its food-delivery service, Caviar, to DoorDash for $410 million, a move that Cramer complimented.”I think they got a fabulous price, kind of unbelievable,” Cramer said. “Believe me, you don’t want to be in the online delivery business. The margins are cut throat ,” he added.This is why, despite its recent struggles, Square is a stock worth owning, Cramer said.”Square used to be extremely expensive, but now it sells for 8.5 times next year’s sales and 53 times next year’s earnings estimates,” he said. “Given that the company has a 46% long-term growth rate, I’m calling it reasonable relative to its growth rate.”


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