Shopify Inc.SHOP.TODON'T BUYFeb 12, 2026Stock price when the opinion was issued
As of Sep 11, 2026. Market Open.
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.
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.
For money managers looking for GARP (growth at a reasonable price), this name has always had valuation issues. Despite EPS expectations of 30+%, you're paying a lot for it. Current PE is 75x, forward PE is 57-58x. Price-to-sales is almost 10x going forward. Beta is 2x the TSX. In the US, many names are cheaper by PEG ratio.
Caters to small- and medium-sized businesses, so you have to keep an eye out for that. Those businesses tend to be more volatile at the end of the business cycle and, indeed, may not survive.
Usually a decent trading name, but now price is below 200-day MA (which is still trending higher, which is good). Watch out if it breaks to the downside of that. Though doesn't suffer from the AI scare, part of the broader rotation away from tech.