Ottawa’s Shopify is coming off a “tremendous” fourth quarter that saw revenues jump 99 per cent from a year earlier, CEO Tobias Lütke said Wednesday.
“Over the holiday season our merchants collectively sold almost $3 billion worth of products, a huge increase from the year before,” Mr. Lütke said in a statement. “We are also seeing our merchants use Shopify to sell on multiple new sales channels like mobile and social.”
Shopify’s fourth-quarter revenue was $70.2 million, almost double the total from the same period in 2014. CFO Russ Jones said this result highlights the e-commerce juggernaut’s strong business model.
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“Many of our efforts in 2015 – such as adding multiple new sales channels to a single integrated back office – were driven by our simple goal of helping merchants become more successful,” Mr. Jones said in a statement. “We added a record number of new merchants in the fourth quarter and are proud that over half of the more than 1,000 merchants now using Shopify Plus are upgrades from merchants who have grown their businesses on Shopify.”
As of Dec. 31, Shopify’s monthly recurring revenue is $11.3 million, up 72 per cent from December 2014.
While fourth quarter gross profit grew 81 per cent to $35.5 million in the fourth quarter, Shopify (TSX:SH) still posted a net loss of $6.3 million or eight cents per share, compared with $4.8 million or 12 cents per share in the same quarter of last year.
At the end of 2015, Shopify had $190.2 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, compared with $59.7 million at the same point last year.
Total 2015 revenue was $205.2 million, up 95 per cent from 2014. Gross profit was up 80 per cent to $111.1 million, and the company’s net loss was $18.8 million, or 30 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $22.3 million, or 57 cents per share, for 2014.
Looking ahead, Shopify is projecting 2016 first-quarter revenues between $65 million and $67 million and an adjusted operating loss between $6.5 million and $7.5 million. For the full year, it is expecting revenues between $320 million and $330 million and an adjusted operating loss between $16 million and $22 million.
Mr. Lütke said the company’s mobile offerings are the way of the future.
“We believe that multichannel, cloud commerce is an industry-wide shift that is still in its infancy,” he said in a statement.
Shopify’s shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange closed at $30.70 on Wednesday, an increase of 7.8 per cent from the day before. On the Nasdaq, Shopify was up nine per cent to $22.37.
