Shares of Shopify Inc. dropped as investor concerns about long-term growth outweighed the Canadian e-commerce platform’s outlook for the current quarter.
Shopify said Wednesday that revenue in the current quarter will grow by 20% or more. Even so, analysts at Morgan Stanley wrote in a note that investors “still lack any road map” on future growth after the earnings call. US-listed shares of the Canadian e-commerce company slumped as much as 6.6% to $58.33, erasing more than $3 billion in market value.
Shopify president Harley Finkelstein defended the company’s strategy Thursday in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “We are architecting a new shape of Shopify” with a “focus on our main quest which is commerce software and retail software,” he said, responding to a question on the Morgan Stanley note. “We are also earning more parts of the merchant business.”
The company is expanding its shipping business and global merchant base. The cost-to-value ratio has led the company to see more merchants migrate to Shopify, according to Finkelstein. In May this year, Shopify announced plans to cut 20% of its staff and sell its logistics business to Flexport, a San Francisco-based supply chain management company.
Finklestein said he was optimistic about Shopify’s prospects even in a recessionary environment, saying businesses will still need to modernize and improve their efficiency using Shopify’s tools.
“For $39 a month, you can build a multimillion-dollar or multibillion-dollar company,” Finkelstein said. On Wednesday, Shopify said its second-quarter revenue was $1.69 billion, exceeding analysts’ expectations.
The shares fell 4.8% to $59.44 at 2:46 p.m. in New York and had gained 80% through Wednesday’s close.
--With assistance from Ed Ludlow.
