Despite recent stock price issues, Shopify is showing a sense of fulfillment

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From the moment Shopify first went public seven years ago, there was a huge gap between investor thinking and the company’s CEO and founder, Tobi Lütke.

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This is rarely more apparent than Thursday. On Thursday, an e-commerce giant released its first-quarter financial results, dropping the value of Shopify’s stock by nearly 15%.

That was triggered by the company’s first-quarter sales of $ 1.2 billion, up 22% year-on-year, which was lower than expected and operating profit of $ 139 million. I suffered an operating loss of nearly $ 100 million. Same period a year ago. (All numbers are in US dollars.)

Still, at a conference call on Thursday morning, with an independent analyst explaining how Shopify was hiring top talent from around the world, including a former employee who returned to part of something special. There was a conference call.

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“Everything is working very well,” Lütke said, adding that the stock price of his company, which has lost three-quarters of its value since November, was not really taken into account in employee decision-making. rice field.

“Obviously, stock prices go up (in conversation), but not as much as people think,” he said. “Stocks are a snapshot of the time people are making long-term choices.” That’s certainly how Lütke sees the universe.

Many of Shopify’s 10,000+ employees receive a portion of their salary in the form of restricted stock units or stock options. Its value was initially a pandemic-fueled surge, and has recently changed significantly with the inevitable setbacks as life returns. Something is approaching normal. In short, employees have a built-in appreciation of the investor’s experience.

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But likewise, they see the benefits of focusing on long distances up close, as their bosses do. That’s because, even if Shopify’s stock soars, the company’s workforce has laid the foundation for a multi-faceted profit machine that has driven a pandemic into a pandemic.

To see how, let’s restructure the company’s accounts so that the fiscal year ends on March 31st. This adjustment allows you to compare the company’s two-year performance during a pandemic with the 12-month period just before the company arrives.

In the first year of COVID, Shopify’s revenue doubled to $ 3.4 billion. Second, they surged another 40 percent to $ 4.8 billion. By comparison, it is this performance that looks disappointing in the last quarter. Nonetheless, the company is expected to generate nearly $ 6 billion in revenue over the 12 months to March 31, 2023, with a 25% profit.

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When it comes to earnings, it’s best not to get too excited about these. Lütke did not keep his intention to keep investing heavily to set up a company for many years.

The company’s core goal is to help entrepreneurs get their products into the hands of their customers. Unlike Amazon, Shopify doesn’t run a marketplace. Instead, it provides technology to over 2 million merchants. Overall, the latter generated $ 43 billion in revenue in the first quarter. Shopify received nearly 3% of these revenues in the form of subscription fees to enable electronic storefronts and app fees from paid systems to customer relationship management.

At the heart of the system is a dashboard developed by Shopify that tells sellers which products are selling well through a variety of sales channels, whether purchased online or directly.

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What’s missing is a large logistics system that can quickly serve customers’ purchases across North America. Shopify confirmed Thursday that it will pay $ 2.1 billion to acquire Deliverr, a San Francisco-based two-day fulfillment specialist with approximately 400 employees. Assuming a deal closes following a regulatory review, the two companies will jointly develop a new way to integrate the software platform and clean up the journey of the product itself, the most annoying part of e-commerce.

As always, the idea is to simplify commerce. If Shopify actually does this, no matter what the stock market says, the rest must follow.