A flurry of holiday sales saw
The Ottawa-based supplier of e-commerce software reported Tuesday a fourth-quarter profit of
The firm, which keeps its books in
It attributed the increase to the Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend and holiday season, which many expected to be marked with consumers being more careful about spending.
However, economic woes weighed little on the sales Shopify saw throughout the season.
The four-day period spanning Black Friday and Cyber Monday alone generated
The company's president said about 61 million consumers worldwide purchased from brands using Shopify, more than 17,500 merchants made their first sale over the Black Friday-Cyber Monday sales period and more than 55,000 merchants had their highest selling day ever on Shopify.
"Our platform handled a staggering 967,000 requests per second, which is the same as 58 million requests per minute, nearly 80 per cent higher than our peak traffic just two years ago," he said.
Finkelstein has long likened Black Friday and Cyber Monday to the
Ahead of the shopping period this year, he told The Canadian Press he expected inflation, high interest rates and layoffs to make consumers more intentional about what they buy.
"I think 'less but better' is probably going to be one of the themes," he said at the time.
"More quality, less quantity, not necessarily buying 15 pieces of product, but rather buy three that are more meaningful to you."
When
Shopify's earnings told a different story. Its profit amounted to
On an adjusted basis, Shopify says it earned
However, the results pushed Shopify's share price down 12.54 per cent or
Analysts, including
"We believe the stock is down about 12 per cent on lower-than-anticipated Q1 operating margin, whereas the investors were likely expecting continued expansion," Chan wrote in a note to investors.
"Given the strong share price performance and high relative valuation, we are not surprised by the market reaction."
The quarter also showed Shopify's merchant solutions revenue rose to
Over the entire year, Shopify added 35 per cent more merchants from outside
"There are opportunities for us to go beyond
"I mean we've captured less than one per cent of market share in global retail sales, even as our product and geographies have expanded ... We'll continue to focus on international. We think we're still underpenetrated there."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published
Companies in this story: (TSX:SHOP)
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