Shopify 3Q'25 Update
Despite having the good fortune of owning Shopify after the 2022 drawdown, I had the “misfortune” of selling it at less than one-third of the current stock price in early 2023. Given how Shopify powers increasingly a sizable portion of e-commerce market, I still try to follow them closely. Every time I update the below chart, it is hard not to admire this Canadian company keeping pace with the 800-pound gorilla called Amazon!
One of the key reasons Shopify’s incremental GMV growth nearly matches Amazon’s is their much stronger presence outside North America. While Amazon marketplace operates in 23 countries, it is still very much US centric. For example, while we don’t know Amazon’s exact growth by geography only in retail business, we do know Amazon’s North America revenue increased by $10.7 Billion whereas International revenue increased by only $5 Billion YoY in 3Q’25. In contrast, Shopify mentioned half of their GMV dollar growth in Q3 came from outside North America. It is lot easier to scale Shopify’s platform internationally than to scale Amazon’s marketplace.
Another important driver for Shopify GMV growth was their growing B2B business. For the last two years, B2B GMV consistently grew at “over 100%” and it doubled again in Q3. They don’t disclose how big B2B GMV exactly is, but if you keep doubling it every year, it’s gotta be a very strong tailwind to their GMV growth. From the call:
“…large enterprise, especially the more -- the older ones, the ones that have been around for decades, they’re having conversations in their boardrooms talking about where do we go to future-proof platform, where do we go to make sure that we don’t miss out on agentic commerce? And all roads lead to Shopify.
we nearly doubled B2B GMV again in Q3, up 98% year-over-year. This isn’t just 1 cohort or 1 region; we’re seeing broad GMV growth across both new and established merchant cohorts. For example, in Canada, Q3 B2B GMV was up over 155% year-over-year.”
I will cover rest of their quarter behind the paywall.
In addition to “Daily Dose” (yes, DAILY) like this, MBI Deep Dives publishes one Deep Dive on a publicly listed company every month. You can find all the 64 Deep Dives here.