How Shopify aims to level the playing field with its machine learning-driven model of lending
Shopify is widely known for giving independent merchants a platform to start, run, market and manage their businesses.
But over the past five years, the company has been steadily growing another part of its own business: Shopify Capital. Through this arm, the Canadian commerce giant revealed today that it has provided $2 billion in funding to tens of thousands of entrepreneurs.
Besides being a cool milestone, how it works is interesting. Merchants don’t necessarily have to apply for loans. Shopify’s machine learning models identify eligible merchants based on their previous sales history and store performance, according to Solmaz Shahalizadeh, vice president of data science and engineering, commerce intelligence at Shopify. If a merchant accepts a pre-approved offer, they can generally receive funding in two to five business days.
Shopify sees 110 percent year-over-year revenue growth as e-commerce continues to boom amid pandemic
Shopify continued to see massive growth in the first quarter of 2021 with revenue, income and gross profit all significantly increasing year-over-year.
Shopify’s total revenue for the first quarter of this year was $988.6 million, an increase of 110 percent year-over-year. The company’s gross profit was up 117 percent to $558.7 million, compared with $257 million for the first quarter of 2020. All numbers are in USD.
The Ottawa-based company’s net income for the quarter was $1.25 billion, or $9.94 per diluted share. This is compared with a net loss of $31.4 million, or $0.27 per diluted share. Shopify’s net income also included a $1.3 billion unrealized gain on its equity investment in Affirm, which went public in January.
Shopify Announces First-Quarter 2021 Financial Results finanznachrichten.de - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from finanznachrichten.de Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
As the Shopify share price slides, investors are getting nervous. This US tech stock has investment risks attached to its significant growth potential. Would I buy?