Shopify surges to within $1B of Royal Bank for title of most valuable company in Canada

Shares in Canadian e-commerce firm Shopify Inc. surged on Wednesday after the company said more and more businesses are signing up for its online selling platform during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Ottawa-based company reports in U.S. dollars and says it took in $470 million in revenue in the first three months of 2020. That's up from $320 million in the same period a year ago.

Analysts who cover the company were expecting revenue to come in at around $442 million.

Shopify's shares have been one of the few successes on the TSX of late, with the value of the company more than doubling since the start of April. Shares in the company gained another six per cent on the TSX on Wednesday to trade at more than $1,000 a share.

• From 2019: Canada's Shopify getting set to challenge Amazon

At that price, the company is worth just over $120 billion. That's enough to make Shopify the second-most valuable company in Canada, behind the Royal Bank of Canada, which is just shy of $121 billion at its current stock price.

CEO Tobi Lutke says the company is doing everything it can to help businesses start selling online to stay afloat.

"The spread of COVID-19 is going to be a tough time for all entrepreneurs," he said in a statement. "We are working as fast as we can to support our merchants by re-tooling our products to help them adapt to this new reality."

Two weeks ago on Twitter, the company's chief technology officer, Jean-Michel Lemieux, noted the surging demand and said the company was seeing sales volumes on its platform that rival Black Friday.

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