Shopify faces a lot of risk in the AI revolution, which limits its upside at a $185 billion market cap and its current multiple. It has executed very well, and management may stay ahead so its infrastructure capitalizes on the agentic wave instead of being overrun, but that is not guaranteed. Against other plays and an already heavy software allocation, it is a candidate to offload, possibly after another chance at its all-time high. x.com 

Shopify is one of the best businesses around, but its valuation is too difficult to justify owning it. @profpicsou's article asks whether AI will destroy SaaS and whether Shopify, now a near-unavoidable commerce machine with millions of stores and a huge ecosystem, is well placed as plugins connect to ChatGPT, and at what price. Its section on AI and agentic impact is especially worth reading. x.com 

Shopify is becoming the infrastructure layer for modern commerce, not just a store builder. Payments, Shop Pay, lending, analytics and apps deepen its ecosystem, and even if AI makes building stores easier, merchants still need payments, checkout, inventory, customer data and fraud prevention. Revenue rose 34%, GMV 32% to $115.6B, and free cash flow margin hit 18%; growing over 30% while expanding margins at this maturity is impressive. President Harley Finkelstein called it a monster quarter. … Show more

Shopify the stock, not the company, is the problem: at about 10x sales and 60x forward earnings, expectations are so stretched that small disappointments could bring large multiple compression. The business is exceptional, with revenue up 34%, a beat, and a growth outlook raised to the low 30s from the high 20s. But the higher-quality subscription business grows much slower than merchant solutions, which carry different economics. Upside needs acceleration; downside needs only normalization. … Show more

Shopify is hard to own at 60 times free cash flow. A post the author replies to calls the valuation reasonable for a company accelerating revenue growth in the age of AI; the 60x free cash flow multiple is the objection. x.com 

Shopify is becoming the infrastructure layer between merchants and AI agents, making AI a source of new demand rather than only a threat. In Q2, AI-driven traffic and orders tripled, and new-buyer orders from AI channels came at nearly twice other channels' rate. Its Catalog gives agents over 1 billion products with 2x higher conversion, and MRR growth reached 19%. A 79x forward P/E premium is justified by accelerating growth, strong retention and improving profitability, if execution holds. … Show more

Shopify's valuation still looks stretched against its prior lows, a concern that has never drawn a great rebuttal. Per GuruFocus, it trades at 10-11x EV/revenue versus roughly 6-7x in 2022. Having killed its fulfillment push to compete with Amazon FBA, Shopify is essentially a SaaS stock and should be valued like one. x.com 

Shopify's valuation remains the obstacle to buying, even though the business has several ways to keep growing. It is moving higher on the watchlist, but it is not a buy yet. x.com 

Shopify's 34% growth and 15% FCF margin give it an elite Rule of 40 score of 49, so the market will forgive its GAAP loss. That loss came from a $1.1B write-down on its stakes in Affirm, Global-e and Klaviyo, market volatility rather than business failure. Merchant Solutions grew 39% versus 21% for subscriptions, showing Shopify is really a fintech company, and Bloomberg flows show smart money buying the dip at $108. x.com  x.com  x.com  x.com 

Shopify is very expensive at 13x sales because it is really a fintech company, yet it trades at a tech multiple that stretches reality. x.com