Yahoo Finance Shopify shares rise after Black Friday sales break record
Shopify Inc. shares jumped Monday after the e-commerce company said Black Friday sales for merchants on its system broke a record.
Shares were up as much as nine per cent on the Toronto Stock Exchange, approaching $54 per share, when the early momentum faded and the stock reversed course, dropping to about $51 per share at around 11.30 a.m., which was about three per cent higher than Friday’s close.
The Ottawa-based company, which has emerged as Canada’s leading digital technology company in recent years, provides online infrastructure for retailers in more than 175 countries. Shopify said Black Friday purchases on its platform were US$3.36 billion, up 17 per cent from the year before.
At its peak Shopify merchants collectively were seeing sales of US$3.5 million a minute, it said in a press release. The top selling cities in Canada were Toronto, Calgary and Montreal with an average cart price of $157.
Martin Toner, analyst at ATB Capital Markets Inc., said Shopify faces a tough comparison with last year’s Christmas season when online spending reached a COVID peak. The sales growth on Black Friday was more than he expected and “an indication that things are going a little better than the consensus expects.”
“We think (the stock) is very undervalued,” he said.
CEO Tobi Lütke was on Twitter over the weekend, tweeting out the latest gross merchandise value (GMV) and inviting readers to follow along on a live results site and guess what the final numbers would be.
Shopify wasn’t the only one ringing in record sales.
Shoppers spent a record US$9.12 billion online on Black Friday, up 2.3 per cent from last year, according to Adobe Analytics, which tracks transactions at over 85 of the top 100 U.S. online stores.
Cyber Monday is expected to remain the biggest online shopping day and bring in a further US$11.6 billion in sales, says Adobe.
Additional reporting by Reuters
