Is MQ a good stock to buy? We came across a bullish thesis on Marqeta, Inc. on Capital Blueprint’s Substack by Jin. In this article, we will summarize the bulls’ thesis on MQ. Marqeta, Inc.’s share was trading at $4.1800 as of June 29th. MQ’s trailing and forward P/E were 418.00 and 208.33 respectively according to Yahoo Finance.
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Marqeta, Inc. (NASDAQ: MQ) is a cloud-native, API-first card issuing and payment processing platform that enables fintechs, digital banks, and enterprises to launch customized debit, credit, prepaid, and virtual card programs through transaction-based fees rather than credit exposure. The company has established a leading position in modern card issuance, particularly across buy now, pay later (BNPL), gig economy, expense management, and embedded finance, while expanding internationally through the TransactPay acquisition and Banking Circle partnership.
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Marqeta’s recent results highlight a meaningful operational inflection, with record transaction payment volume, accelerating gross profit, expanding adjusted EBITDA, and its first genuine GAAP profitable quarter, demonstrating that operating leverage is beginning to emerge as scale increases. Management is also shifting the business toward higher-margin value-added services, including fraud prevention, real-time decisioning, lending solutions, and money movement capabilities, which are expected to offset pressure from declining transaction take rates over time.
The investment thesis rests on continued customer diversification beyond Block, stabilization of gross profit per transaction, sustained adoption of value-added services, and international expansion, all of which could improve profitability and support a higher valuation.
Although customer concentration, pricing pressure from Block, interchange regulation, and increasing competition remain key risks, Marqeta’s strong net cash position, improving cash generation, regulatory licenses, patented Just-in-Time funding technology, and growing embedded finance ecosystem provide a solid foundation for long-term growth.
Trading at approximately 2.2x EV/gross profit, the shares appear modestly undervalued relative to peers. The base case suggests fair value of $5–6 per share, representing roughly 28–54% upside, while successful execution through customer diversification, take-rate stabilization, and continued margin expansion could support a bullish valuation of $7–9 per share.
Previously, we covered a bullish thesis on Fiserv, Inc. (FI) by David in October 2024, which highlighted the company’s mission-critical banking infrastructure, sticky customer relationships, diversified payments platform, strategic First Data acquisition, and shareholder value creation through buybacks. FI’s stock price has depreciated by approximately 75.86% since our coverage. Jin shares a similar view but emphasizes on API-first card issuing, operating leverage, value-added services, and customer diversification.
Marqeta, Inc. is not on our list of the 40 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 23 hedge fund portfolios held MQ at the end of the first quarter which was 27 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the risk and potential of MQ as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than MQ and that has 10,000% upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
Disclosure: None.
