Shares of financial technology (fintech) company Block (NYSE: SQ) fell on Thursday following disappointing retail sales data from the Census Bureau. For those who may not know, a large portion of Block's business is dependent on brick-and-mortar retail. And that's why the stock was down 7% and falling as of 1 p.m. EST.

According to data from the Census Bureau released this morning, U.S. retail and food-service sales were down -0.6% in November compared to October. And even excluding gas station sales, November retail was still down 0.6%. That's worse than what many economists projected and why the S&P 500 was down a sharp 2.8% as of this writing.

Block generates a lot of revenue from Bitcoin. But it doesn't make a profit from it, so let's exclude it for the sake of discussion. Excluding Bitcoin revenue, Block generated 64% of its revenue from its Square ecosystem in the third quarter of 2022. The Square ecosystem provides products and services for merchants. And 60% of Q3 gross payment volume on the Square ecosystem came from merchants with $500,000 or less in annualized payment volume.

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Source Fool.com