Investing in Shopify (NYSE:SHOP) stock doesn’t make much sense at the moment. That isn’t to say that the eCommerce platform targeted toward small and medium businesses isn’t a good one. It has shown strong fundamental improvement in its early life.
Source: Paul McKinnon / Shutterstock.com
As a business, Shopify is doing quite well. But as 2022 is proving, it requires more than strong current growth to maintain or improve share prices. More succinctly, the market hates bad news.
Bad News
The reason to be wary of Shopify shares boils down to the first sentence of 2022 guidance from the Feb. 16 earnings report. The report stated what the company expects:
“Year-over-year revenue growth to be lower in the first quarter of 2022 and highest in the fourth quarter of 2022 due to three factors. First, we do not expect the COVID-triggered acceleration of eCommerce in the first half of 2021 from lockdowns and government stimulus to repeat in the first half of 2022. Second, our new terms with apps and theme developers cause two differences from last year’s first quarter: the elimination of Shopify’s rev share on partners’ first million dollars of revenue annually reset on January 1st and the shift from gross to net revenue recognition for the sale of themes as a result of revised contract terms with our theme partners.”
That news sent SHOP shares declining rapidly. In the few days subsequent to the release, share prices declined over 30%. They’ve gone even lower since. Investors have shown that they don’t care that Shopify anticipates a strong end to 2022. Covid-19 dynamics aren’t what they were a year ago. And Shopify won’t get a share of the revenue from sellers using its platform on their first $1 million in sales.
None of that is positive. But there is a conundrum here: Shopify had a very strong year in 2021. It is a mature eCommerce company that provided strong results outside of guidance.
Still Strong
As president Harley Finkelstein noted the company has had a stellar two-year run: “We nearly tripled revenue, more than doubled GMV and the Shopify team, and the number of merchants using Shopify is nearly twice as big as 2019 levels.”
There’s a lot that could be said about that quote. But it’s worth noting that the company is deriving outsized revenue increases on improved merchandise volume. That’s a strong sign which implies that Shopify’s business is improving. After all, if you move twice as much product and receive close to three times the revenue — that’s a positive.
The problem again isn’t that Shopify performed poorly. It reached $1.38 billion in Q4 revenues, up 41% on a year-over-year basis. The problem is that Shopify is maturing. The market will reward it when it provides growth-stock attributes, not value-based attributes. Or at least that’s the way it appears in early 2022.
Relative Position
The funny thing is that investors were willing to pay a lot of money for SHOP stock throughout 2020 and 2021. Value metrics like price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio didn’t matter. Now Shopify has come down in price and its P/E ratio is slightly better than average in its industry.
That’s probably a better way to view Shopify now. It’s maturing and the market could come around. But investors probably won’t be willing to pay significantly more unless Shopify finds growth soon.
What to Do
Shopify is a paradox right now: It is quite strong fundamentally but it seems to be entering a maturing period. The market will punish it for anything that suggests its growth period is over. That’s what happened. So despite the relatively strong business fundamentals, I’d stay away.
If signs emerge that the market is receptive toward Shopify as a maturing eCommerce platform and stock, then the narrative changes.
On the date of publication, Alex Sirois did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.
The post Shopify Is Suffering a Market Sentiment Swing But Won’t Last Forever appeared first on InvestorPlace.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
投资Shopify (NYSE: SHOP ) 股票目前没有多大意义。这并不是说针对中小企业的电子商务平台不好。它在其早期生活中表现出强大的根本性改善。
作为一家企业，Shopify 做得很好。但正如 2022 年所证明的那样，要维持或提高股价，不仅需要强劲的当前增长。更简洁地说，市场讨厌坏消息。
坏消息
警惕 Shopify 股票的原因归结为 2 月 16 日收益报告中 2022 年指引的第一句话。该报告陈述了公司的预期：
“由于三个因素，2022 年第一季度的收入同比增长将较低，而 2022 年第四季度的收入增长将最高。首先，我们预计 2021 年上半年因封锁和政府刺激而导致的电子商务加速不会在 2022 年上半年重演。其次，我们与应用程序和主题开发者的新条款与去年的第一个条款有两个不同之处季度：取消 Shopify 在 1 月 1 日重置的合作伙伴每年第一百万美元收入的收入份额，以及由于与我们的主题合作伙伴修改合同条款而从总收入确认转变为净收入确认销售主题。”
这一消息导致 SHOP 股价迅速下跌。在发布后的几天内，股价下跌了 30% 以上。从那以后，它们的价格甚至更低。投资者已经表明，他们并不关心 Shopify 预计到 2022 年会强劲结束。Covid-19 的动态与一年前不同。而且 Shopify 不会从使用其平台的卖家的前 100 万美元销售额中分得一部分收入。
这些都不是积极的。但这里有一个难题：Shopify 在 2021 年的表现非常强劲。它是一家成熟的电子商务公司，在指导之外提供了强劲的业绩。
仍然强大
正如总裁 Harley Finkelstein 指出的那样，该公司两年来表现出色：“我们的收入几乎翻了三倍，GMV 和 Shopify 团队增加了一倍多，使用 Shopify 的商家数量几乎是 2019 年水平的两倍。”
关于那句话，有很多可以说的。但值得注意的是，由于商品数量的增加，该公司的收入大幅增长。这是一个强烈的信号，表明 Shopify 的业务正在改善。毕竟，如果你移动两倍的产品并获得接近三倍的收入——那是积极的。
问题再次不是 Shopify 表现不佳。第四季度收入达到 13.8 亿美元，同比增长 41%。问题是 Shopify 正在成熟。当它提供成长型股票属性而不是基于价值的属性时，市场会奖励它。或者至少这就是它在 2022 年初出现的方式
相对位置
有趣的是，投资者愿意在 2020 年和 2021 年期间为 SHOP 股票支付大量资金。市盈率 (P/E) 等价值指标并不重要。现在Shopify已经降价，市盈率略好于行业平均水平。
这可能是现在查看 Shopify 的更好方式。它正在成熟，市场可能会出现。但除非 Shopify 很快找到增长，否则投资者可能不会愿意支付更多。
该怎么办
Shopify 现在是一个悖论：它的基本面相当强大，但似乎正在进入成熟期。市场会因任何暗示其增长期结束的事情而惩罚它。这就是发生的事情。因此，尽管业务基本面相对强劲，我还是会远离。
如果有迹象表明市场接受 Shopify 作为一个成熟的电子商务平台和股票，那么叙述就会改变。
在发布之日，Alex Sirois 没有（直接或间接）在本文提到的证券中持有任何头寸。本文中表达的观点是作者的观点，受 InvestorPlace.com发布指南的约束。
厦门商城系统开发有人问我最近用得比较多的开发邮件有哪些？其实说不准，我会针对不同的客户分别去写，下单多都是几个老客户。新客户也是由老客户推荐居多，偶尔会遇到几个从社媒或者B2B平台来的客户。 我会借助最近促销季的思路，给客户发一下类似下面的邮件，大家可以参考一…
码刀科技（www.lekshop.cn）是国内知名企业级电商平台提供商，为企业级商家提供最佳的电商平台搭建（多种模式电商平台搭建：B2B/B2B2C/B2C/O2O/新零售/跨境等）、平台管理系统开发及互联网采购解决方案服务, 联系客服了解更多.
