Money
Outside the square – Twitter CEO’s grand plans for Afterpay
Jack Dorsey has used Square’s quarterly earnings call to outline his company’s future and convince shareholders to support the $39billion dollar Afterpay takeover bid
Dorsey believes bringing Afterpay into business operations will increase e-commerce activity across both platforms and further entice young shoppers to spend up.
It plans to takeover Afterpay in a deal that values the Australian company at $39 billion. That makes it the biggest buyout deal so far in Australian corporate history.
The Twitter founder says Afterpay has a unique advantage in the buy now, pay later sector because it was the first on the scene and it has been built up “authentically”.
Dorsey says Afterpay was “extremely early in this space and helped define a lot of it, and really raised the bar for what everyone else doing – we were impressed by the vision, the ambition and the entrepreneurship”.
Following the takeover announcement, Square’s shares fell by 5 percent when compared with trading on Friday, as investors made sense of the deal.
However, after Dorsey’s pitch at the quarterly earnings call, Squares shares were up 6 percent from Friday.
It comes as shareholders voice their concerns that Square is failing to bring merchants and retail users together… and questioning how Afterpay will create value for the company.
James Whelan of VFS Group weighed in on whether Afterpay is in fact authentic.