Payments company Square drops 10 percent amid a broader sell-off in once-loved technology stocks

Home Finance Payments company Square drops 10 percent amid a broader sell-off in once-loved technology stocks
Payments company Square drops 10 percent amid a broader sell-off in once-loved technology stocks

Shares of payments company Square dropped 10 percent Monday as major tech stocks struggled to find footing.

Square‘s stock fell 10 percent to roughly $63 after, bringing its one-month losses to 14 percent. Shares of the San Francisco-based company, run by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, had been on a tear for most of this year and are still up 80 percent since January.

Last week, Square said in a securities filing that its finance chief Sarah Friar would leave a few weeks earlier than expected. Square had announced in October that Friar had accepted a job as CEO of social-networking firm Nextdoor.com, and would stay in her role as CFO until December. On Thursday though, the fintech company said her last day would be November 16 because she wanted to spend more time with her family, according to the SEC filing.

Timothy Murphy and Mohit Daswani, two executives from the company’s finance department, will serve as interim Co-CFOs until Friar’s role is permanently filled. Square board member and former Goldman Sachs finance chief David Viniar is overseeing the search.

The company also said in a securities filing Jack Dorsey had sold roughly 130,000 shares, worth about $7.4 million at the time, in a pre-scheduled sale last week.

Bitcoin was also lower Monday and fell below $5,000 for the first time since last October. Square offers bitcoin trading through its popular Square Cash app and said it generated $43 million in revenue from the cryptocurrency in the third quarter.

Square is well-known in the payments sector for its credit card processor, payment hardware and popular Cash app but has also moved into small business lending through Square Capital.

Apple, Amazon and Facebook also weighed on markets Monday with the S&P technology sector pulling back 3.9 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 500 points, while the S&P 500 dropped 2 percent.