=Shopify (SHOP) reported earnings on Wed 16 Feb 22 (b/o)

 

Shopify beats by $0.05, beats on revs 

• Reports Q4 (Dec) earnings of $1.36 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.05 better than the S&P Capital IQ Consensus of $1.31; revenues rose 41.1% year/year to $1.38 bln vs the $1.34 bln S&P Capital IQ Consensus.
• FY22 outlook:
  • 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. Since these terms didn't come into play until the second half of last year, these will be a headwind to Subscriptions Solutions revenue in the first half of 2022, particularly in the first quarter. And third, we expect certain commercial initiatives and sales and marketing investments will gain momentum over the course of 2022.
  • Subscriptions Solutions revenue growth to be driven by more merchants around the world joining the platform than in 2021, as we introduce new commercial initiatives and aggressively invest in sales and marketing to expand our addressable market and more deeply penetrate existing markets. Our objective in 2022 will be to optimize our efforts around getting more merchants on the platform and to success.
  • Merchant Solutions revenue growth to be more than twice the rate of subscription solutions revenue growth year-over-year, as merchants make greater use of our offerings, and as we expand existing products into new geographies and roll out newer features like Shopify Markets. The increase of Merchant Solutions in our overall revenue mix means gross profit dollar growth will trail revenue growth.
  • Lastly, for 2022, we anticipate capital expenditures of $200 million, stock-based compensation expenses and related payroll taxes of $800 million and amortization of acquired intangibles of $28 million.
    
• "We are leveraging our learnings to date to continue building simple and fast fulfillment. We are consolidating our network into larger facilities; we are shifting to operate more of them ourselves to better control quality and cost; and we are unifying the network by operationalizing our warehouse management system to highly integrate with Shopify's back office and checkout so merchants can seamlessly offer and achieve delivery promises. In conjunction with our updated, more direct approach, our expectations for Shopify Fulfillment Network revenue, operating expenses and capital expenditures will be incorporated in our overall Shopify outlook, as they are for 2022."