Brian MaddenShopify Inc.SHOP.TODON'T BUYApr 05, 2021

Incredible growth ahead. He owns a bit. Issue is valuation of 100x PE. Growing nicely. Probably 5-10 years away from being a company you'd buy just on financials. Buy a bit. If it drops buy some more, and so on. Right now the market's paying for growth, but at some point it may not.

Volatile and frustrating to trade the past year. He's been in and out of it. But there's been an uptrend since May. Relative strength is improving, but you have to live with the swings.

There is lots of volatility with this stock. It has positioned itself well in the last while. It has lots of free cash flow with no need to spend a lot of money on AI. It can use AI for its own benefit, helping and setting up business clients. Also to cut costs. Buy on a pullback.

Seems not to have taken its eye off the ball after the post-pandemic swoon. Hasn't suffered the fate of so many other Canadian tech stories. Good way to participate in AI. Valuation's too high to include in his funds.

Hit earlier in the year on the SaaSpocalypse, which was misguided to some degree. Won't get replaced, very agentic. About 14% of total US e-commerce, major player. Always rich, but now at the low end. Spending hasn't increased, yet cashflow is growing. META Muse announcement has lifted stock recently.

Interesting, but risky. If you look at the AI value chain, the hardware and infrastructure layers are where a lot of the value has been accruing. Has shown innovation. Have to see how spending translates into growth. If you own it, hold.

Great story. Valuation has come down since last year. Caught an upgrade this morning. Q2 was great, Q3 looks impressive. Doing everything right. Agentic ambitions. You really have to use the chart, as it's always so pricey.

Trading ~40x PE for 2028, growing 25%. Not that bad (compared to a CRWD or a TSLA). In the realm that you can buy it. Use rough periods like now to add quality names like this.

12-month price target of $171. Great example of an e-commerce company that's harvested the power of agentic AI. Caters to small- and medium-sized companies, who can't do agentic AI themselves. But they can go to SHOP, who can spend the $$ and then recoup it via its massive consumer base. 

Excellent liquidity. Negligible debt. Great ROE of 15.5%. High valuation of 104x PE, but it reflects the great growth rate. No dividend.

Their valuation is always too high, now 100x PE. They've had a positive return on capital for 3-4 years in a row, but is not high or consistent. He would consider SHOP if shares fell 75% and the PE was 25x.

Delivered a monster quarter, showing its resilience to AI movement. Its software was built to be more friendly to an agentic future. The agentic push has resulted in more businesses being started, and these are all potential customers for SHOP. Susceptible to consumer spending patterns. Great company, best CEO.

Tariffs: their end users, not Shopify, pays them. But SHOP can help customers manage and calculate tariffs.

Unique business, unique spot. Most recent quarterly results were really strong, and expectation is that will continue. Valuation is very expensive, with very low FCF yield. It's a momentum name -- as long as topline can keep up, valuation will stay strong. Once they start to miss, valuation will come off. Risk/reward is about equal, he'd pass.

They had a strong quarter. As long as earnings grow, shares will rise. But the PE is high so if there's a miss or stumble, shares will fall sharply. There's margin improvement and so far they are executing.

Fabulous business, but overvalued. Has done OK this year, but off quite a bit from highs. Bounces a lot. Doesn't really make a lot of money for the cap size it is. AI will enhance its productivity.

Fear that AI threatens its business. Beat last quarter, revenues were up 34%. Margins were fine. Really getting into agentic AI-powered searches. International upside. 21% earnings growth, trading ~33x PE -- very enticing.