Our favorite Seeking Alpha author Bert Hochfeld recently conducted an interview with Shopify’s Director of Investor Relations, Katie Keita. Here’s a brief excerpt:
Ms. Keita has gone from the top job in investor relations at EMC (NYSE:EMC) which she held until last year to working in a similar capacity for Shopify. Two of the principle issues I wanted to drill down on had to do with just how long this hyper-growth phase might last and if there were competitors either current or potential who might derail the progress of this company. One doesn’t expect totally objective answers to those kinds of questions and in that I was not disappointed.
I do think, based on our conversation that the consensus estimates for 2017 revenue growth are likely to prove significantly conservative. Ms. Keita said that it would not be reasonable for the company’s dollar growth to slow down next year. The current analyst consensus calls for dollar growth in 2017 of $134 million and that would compare to $141 million in dollar growth estimated for this year. I think that based on Ms. Keita’s comments, it would be reasonable to believe that a forecast for 2017 revenues would be at least $500 million and probably a noticeable bit higher than that, rather than the current consensus estimates of $481 million in revenues that are expected in that period.
Obviously Ms. Keita gets the question regarding competition meeting after meeting after meeting and she has the answer down pretty pat. But for the most part, regardless of who is telling the story, it seems to be true. Potential merchants can build their web stores using many different tools. But the fact is that if users want a multi-channel tool that is intuitive and looks pretty there are no great alternatives to Shopify at the moment. I asked about Bigcommerce which is about as close as it gets to what Shopify does and was told that Shopify produces a far superior product. That opinion is endorsed by other 3 rd party analysts such as nchannel.
Read the entire piece at http://seekingalpha.com/article/3999173-shopify-katie-keita-…
Matt
MasterCard (MA), PayPal (PYPL), and Verizon (VZ) Ticker Guide
See all my holdings at http://my.fool.com/profile/CMFCochrane/info.aspx