A trio of headline-making Ottawa-area companies are among the best-performing firms on the Toronto Stock Exchange over the last three years, according to rankings released Wednesday.
Not surprisingly, e-commerce powerhouse Shopify topped the TSX30 list of the exchange’s 30 biggest gainers since 2017.
The Ottawa-based firm that helps more than a million merchants around a world run their digital storefronts saw its share price soar an eye-popping 1,043 per cent between June 30, 2017 and June 30 of this year. Shopify more than doubled the gains made by the next-best performer on the list, B.C.’s Ballard Power Systems, which came in at 459 per cent.
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Already the capital’s biggest tech star heading into the year, Shopify has been on roll in 2020.
The pandemic-fuelled boom in online shopping has seen legions of new merchants sign on to the company’s platform over the past six months. Shopify’s second-quarter revenues nearly doubled year-over-year to $714 million as world-famous names such as Molson Coors, Schwinn and Snickers came into the fold in a rush to capitalize on the e-commerce explosion.
Despite taking a hit this month amid a broader selloff of tech stocks, Shopify’s share price is still up more than 80 per cent since early March and currently sits at just under $1,200 per share. In the process, Shopify surged past RBC to become Canada’s most valuable publicly traded company.
Shopify was joined on the top-30 list by a couple of other local firms that have ridden a wave of exponential growth over the last few years.
Coming in at No. 18 is Canopy Growth Corp., another company that’s no stranger to media attention. Since it was launched back in 2013, the Smiths Falls-based cannabis producer has stayed in the public eye thanks to clickbait-worthy moves such as signing a marketing deal with rapper Snoop Dogg and landing a massive investment from alcohol giant Constellation Brands.
Although 2020 hasn’t been kind to Canopy – the company has laid off more than 600 workers so far this year amid mounting losses as the recreational pot market develops slower than it anticipated – the firm’s stock has still managed a three-year growth rate of 176 per cent.
The third local firm to make the TSX list is Kinaxis. The Kanata-based software company that helps customers manage their supply chains came in at No. 26 on the list with three-year growth of 140 per cent.
Demand for Kinaxis software has surged during the pandemic as cost-conscious manufacturers around the world look to become more efficient during the COVID-fuelled economic downturn. The firm’s second-quarter revenues jumped 45 per cent compared with a year earlier, and its stock price has nearly doubled over the past six months.
