I passed on Shopify at $94 and it's $149 fourteen weeks later. I did the full work to find out if I was wrong: P/E, FCF, Owner's Earnings it's still expensive.

Shopify was trading at $94 on May 14. I put it on my watchlist and didn't buy it.

Fourteen weeks later it's $149, that is 59% higher. So I did the full work on Shopify, because I keep seeing the same argument here: great business, impossible price.

The business is genuinely accelerating:

* Revenue grew 34% last quarter, and if you consider growth since 2015, there has been eleven straight years above 20% growth. Growth is supposed to decay with size but that does not happens with Shopify.
* It grew revenue and cut headcount at the same time. Revenue per employee up 38.7%.
* Once merchants scale they don't leave. Retention is 92% for merchants above $1M GMV and 97% above $10M GMV.
* AI traffic and orders are up 3x.

P/E is the wrong metric to value Shopify because it holds a stake in private companies like Affirm, Klaviyo, etc... when those stock prices swings the income statement swings

Last March operating income nearly doubled and it still printed a net loss.

Using other metrics: 100x owner's earnings, 80x FCF and 72x forward earnings. Every metric tells Shopify is already pricing in future growth.

I ran a model out five years to find Shopify's intrinsic value and my base case returns 4.2% a year from $149.

The bull case gets to 13.3%, and it needs 25% GMV growth, a rising take rate and margin expansion.

Full thesis on my Substack, so you can disagree with my model inputs instead of my conclusion:
[https://equivara.substack.com/p/shopify-ai-orders-tripled-at-a-192](https://equivara.substack.com/p/shopify-ai-orders-tripled-at-a-192)

Is anyone here buying Shopify at this price?