SAN FRANCISCO (AP) _ Square Inc. (SQ) on Thursday reported third-quarter earnings of $36.5 million.

On a per-share basis, the San Francisco-based company said it had profit of 7 cents. Earnings, adjusted for stock option expense and amortization costs, came to 34 cents per share.

The results surpassed Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of 11 analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 14 cents per share.

The mobile payments services provider posted revenue of $3.03 billion in the period, also beating Street forecasts. Eight analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $2.15 billion.

Square shares have nearly tripled since the beginning of the year. In the final minutes of trading on Thursday, shares hit $175.23, nearly tripling in the last 12 months.

This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on SQ at https://www.zacks.com/ap/SQ

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