SHOP Shopify Inc

By Alexander Osipovich 

One of the stock market's biggest winners during the Covid-19 pandemic has been Shopify Inc., an e-commerce software company that has benefited from surging traffic as vast swaths of the global population have been forced to do more of their shopping online.

Shopify's share price was up 6% to about $627 in midday trading Monday, putting it on track for a fresh record close and its eighth consecutive session of gains. The stock has climbed 81% since hitting a recent low on April 2.

Those gains puts the Canada-based company ahead of larger e-commerce players such as Amazon.com Inc., which is up 26% over the same period, and eBay Inc., up 31%. The S&P 500 has risen 13% since April 2 as part of a broad rebound from the depths of the coronavirus selloff.

Shopify sells businesses a variety of tools to make it easier to build, run and market their online stores. The company says it works with more than 1 million merchants world-wide, including Nestlé SA and Staples Inc. It makes money through a mix of recurring subscription fees and other fees, like payment-processing fees, that grow with transaction volumes.

That has benefited Shopify as lockdown measures intended to curtail the coronavirus pandemic have closed bricks-and-mortar storefronts and upended traditional consumption patterns. Last week, a Shopify executive said on Twitter that it was "now handling Black Friday level traffic every day."

Still, the company's stock hasn't escaped the broader market's volatility. Shopify shares sold off sharply at the beginning of April after it suspended guidance for this year. The stock has also attracted significant interest from short sellers in recent weeks, according to data from S3 Partners, a sign that some investors are betting that Shopify stock is overvalued.

Shopify went public in 2015, listing shares on both the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange.

Write to Alexander Osipovich at alexander.osipovich@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 20, 2020 13:20 ET (17:20 GMT)

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