Holiday shopping, Black Friday boost Shopify, reports Q4 profit and 24% revenue growth
TORONTO — A flurry of holiday sales saw Shopify Inc. end 2023 with strong revenue growth and profits even as consumers continued to grapple with inflation.
The Ottawa-based supplier of e-commerce software reported Tuesday a fourth-quarter profit of $657 million US compared with a loss of $623 million US a year earlier.
The firm, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, said its revenue totalled $2.14 billion US for the period ended Dec. 31, up 24 per cent from $1.74 billion US a year earlier.
It attributed the increase to the Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend and holiday season, which many expected to be marked with consumers being more careful about spending.
However, economic woes weighed little on the sales Shopify saw throughout the season.
The four-day period spanning Black Friday and Cyber Monday alone generated $9.3 billion US in sales for Shopify, amounting to 24 per cent growth from the prior year, Harley Finkelstein told analysts Thursday.
The company’s president said about 61 million consumers worldwide purchased from brands using Shopify, more than 17,500 merchants made their first sale over the Black Friday Cyber Monday sales period and more than 55,000 merchants had their highest selling day ever on Shopify.
“Our platform handled a staggering 967,000 requests per second, which is the same as 58 million requests per minute, nearly 80 per cent higher than our peak traffic just two years ago,” he said.
Finkelstein has long likened Black Friday and Cyber Monday to the Super Bowl for Shopify.
Ahead of the shopping period this year, he told The Canadian Press he expected inflation, high interest rates and layoffs to make consumers more intentional about what they buy.
“I think ‘less but better’ is probably going to be one of the themes,” he said at the time.
“More quality, less quantity, not necessarily buying 15 pieces of product, but rather buy three that are more meaningful to you.”