Canadian e-commerce firm Shopify Inc. said its revenue grew by 47 per cent compared to a year ago as more businesses signed up for the company’s online selling platform during this COVID-19 pandemic.
The Ottawa-based company reports in U.S. dollars and says it took in $470 million in revenue in the first three months of 2020. That’s up from $320 million in the same period a year ago.
CEO Tobi Lutke says the company is doing everything it can to help businesses start selling online to stay afloat. “The spread of COVID-19 is going to be a tough time for all entrepreneurs,” he said in a statement. “We are working as fast as we can to support our merchants by re-tooling our products to help them adapt to this new reality. Our goal is that, because Shopify exists, more entrepreneurs and small businesses will get through this.”
Analysts who cover the company were expecting revenue to come in at around $442 million.
Two weeks ago, the company’s chief technology officer, Jean-Michel Lemieux, noted the surging demand on Twitter and said the company was seeing sales volumes on its platform that rival Black Friday.
https://twitter.com/jmwind/status/1250816681024331777
While sales were booming, the company still posted a net loss of $31.4 million or 27 cents a share compared with a loss of $24.2 million US or 22 cents per share.
On an adjusted basis, however, the company posted a profit of $22.3 million or 19 cents per share for the first quarter of 2020 compared with an adjusted profit of $7.1 million or six cents per share for the first quarter of 2019.
That adjusted earnings figure strips out certain costs from the ledger, including “stock-based compensation expenses and related payroll taxes as well as amortization of acquired intangibles and related taxes,” the company says in the fine print of its earnings release.
Shopify’s shares have been one of the few successes on the TSX of late, with the value of the company more than doubling since the start of April.
More to come
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