15 Biggest Companies That Use Shopify

Courtesy Fool TAllan at NPI:

15 Biggest Companies That Use Shopify

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/15-biggest-companies-shopify-…

Denny Schlesinger

15 Biggest Companies That Use Shopify

Impressive list, but not clear how much revenue of these companies is flowing through Shopify’s products. Tesla’s main car sales web site is not a Shopify store front if I am reading this correctly, and other large players are dipping their toes in on smaller, focused projects. For example, Budweiser.com’s swag site uses Shopify, but not the main site. The main Tupperware.com and FTD.com sites are Shopify.

Looking over the 2001 40-F, a couple things stand out:

  1. Large capital raises mainly by selling high-priced shares in 2020 and 2021. Less likely to be sustainable at this rate in the future
  2. $2.9 B in gains on investments in private companies that subsequently went public. Also not likely to be sustainable at scale over time

1&2 provide a cash cushion of over $8 B, with total assets of $13 B and net shareholder’s equity of $11 B, or $88/share. The value of the business is on top of that.

  1. Merchant Solutions (MS) is probably the business category to use as the revenue and profit driver for the future, rather than Subscription Services (SS). Unfortunately MS has a lower gross margin (around 40%) than SS (around 80%).
  2. R&D currently 18.5% of revenue. By comparison MSFT’s and AMZN’s are 12%, and AAPL’s is 6%. Can probably assume this will reduce.
  3. The business is straightforward, which is great to see. The competitive advantage is the speed and scale of building out the Amazon alternative, and SHOP seems to be doing that extremely well.
  4. Gross Merchandise Volume (all purchases that flow through the Shopify system) was $175 B in 2021, a growth of 46% from 2020.

Now on to attempt to make projections of the business.

-Mike

1) Large capital raises mainly by selling high-priced shares in 2020 and 2021. Less likely to be sustainable at this rate in the future
2) $2.9 B in gains on investments in private companies that subsequently went public. Also not likely to be sustainable at scale over time

1&2 provide a cash cushion of over $8 B, with total assets of $13 B and net shareholder’s equity of $11 B, or $88/share. The value of the business is on top of that.

I’ll look into the rest of your post but let me comment on ‘1&2.’

Of course they are not sustainable. Just like Tesla, they took advantage of a serendipitous opportunity to solve one of the most biggest problems that startups face, lack of sufficient working capital. A long time ago while working as a management consultant one statistic stood out, “75% of the companies that go broke do so for lack of sufficient working capital.” It is not ‘sustainable’ but the pile of cash sure sustains the business. Take Tesla, they just completed two brand new factories while paying down debt. Cash sure creates security. After the 2000 bubble I learned the lesson. Now I have what I consider sufficient cash reserves to weather booms and busts.

Denny Schlesinger

most biggest

I need a copy editor! :frowning:

Denny Schlesinger