Shopify Inc.SHOP.TODON'T BUYSep 30, 2024Stock price when the opinion was issued
As of Sep 08, 2026. Market Open.
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.
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.
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.
200-day MA starting to trend a bit lower, price is also below that. High multiple at 60x forward PE, though growth rate is strong, but PEG a bit rich at around 2x. Leaves little room for error. Caters to economically sensitive small-middle companies. AI is both opportunity and risk.
Better opportunities elsewhere.
Are different: CSU buys companies vs. Shopify which is a pure tech company. What PE do you want to pay for CSU? 25x? 20x? SHOP is great and continues to grow. The market perception of AI hurting these companies is wrong. Both are worth buying. He prefers CSU but buy it at a lower PE.
Great run. If you believe that e-commerce retail has a lot of legs (which he does), there are other ways to express that view. SHOP is stuck in the middle. Doubled off bottom, but faces structural issues of having to go up-market to enterprise customers, and AMZN is already there.
Moving up from micro-merchant is easier said than done. Being the UI layer and the feature layer is the most vulnerable part of the value chain that is global e-commerce. Tactically, he'd own AMZN.