(Bloomberg) — Three times in the past 13 years, a Canadian technology firm has burst into prominence and become the country’s most valuable public company. The first two times it proved to be a curse: Nortel Networks Corp. eventually went bankrupt and BlackBerry Ltd. lost its dominance of the smartphone market.
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E-commerce company Shopify Inc. may prove to have more staying power, but its more than 50% drop since Nov. 19 is testing the bulls’ resolve. The swift decline has multiple causes, including the market’s rotation away from high-priced growth stocks and a slowdown in online sales. U.S. non-store retailers had a difficult December, with sales falling 8.7%.
The correction has pulled Shopify’s valuation back to where it was in the early days of the pandemic, when lockdowns of physical stores meant a boom in online sales. Shopify now trades at 24 times trailing revenue, a level last seen in April 2020. The stock is about 13 times analysts’ early estimates for 2023 sales, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Shopify’s plunge has been a major headwind for the S&P/TSX Composite Index, which is down 6.8% since Nov. 19 — even though financial and energy stocks, the two biggest groups, have risen.
Read more: Shopify Target Lowered at Wedbush on Cut Warehouse Contracts
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