Shopify posts record Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend sales, but shares slide as investors cool on growth
Shopify’s platform hiccupped on Cyber Monday even as the Canadian e-commerce company touted record Black Friday Cyber Monday sales and drew a cool reaction from investors.
According to CNBC, Shopify was hit with an outage on Cyber Monday that left some merchants unable to log into Shopify and others unable to access point-of-sale systems, a key portal for managing transactions and other backend processes.
Reuters said the outages peaked around 11 am ET with about 4,000 incidents reported on Downdetector, which also showed roughly 2,500 outages in the UK at its peak.
Shopify said on its website, “We have found and fixed an issue with our login authentication flow, and are seeing signs of recovery for admin and POS (point of sale) login issues now,” adding that it continued to monitor the recovery.
CNBC reported that in a status page update later in the day, Shopify said services were beginning to recover but some merchants might still see disruptions to POS and Admin tools.
A spokesperson pointed CNBC to the status page when asked for comment.
The outage landed on Cyber Monday, described by Reuters as the biggest online shopping day in the US, with strong Black Friday momentum and AI-powered shopping tools expected to drive sales.
As per CNBC, Adobe Analytics estimated that US shoppers would spend US$14.2bn online on Monday, up 6.3 percent from a year earlier, after spending US$11.8bn on Black Friday, a 9.1 percent jump.
Shopify, which sells software for merchants that run online businesses along with services such as advertising and payment processing tools, says it handles more than 10 percent of all e-commerce transactions in the US.
The company built its name as a platform for small businesses and direct-to-consumer brands but now also hosts online storefronts for larger retailers such as Reebok, Mattel, Barnes & Noble and Nestle.
Against that backdrop, Shopify highlighted a record result over the broader Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend.
In its own update, the company said: “Our merchants just made history, generating a record $14.6bn in sales* over Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) weekend, up 27 percent from last year, 24 percent on a constant currency basis.”
Shopify added that 81+ million customers around the world bought from businesses powered by Shopify, and said shopping peaked at 12:01 pm EST on Friday when sales hit $5.1m per minute.
Ahead of Cyber Monday, Shopify president Harley Finkelstein said the company saw US$6.2bn in Black Friday gross merchandise volume, an increase of 25 percent year over year, with cosmetics, activewear, fitness and nutrition among the top product categories, according to CNBC.
Some market reaction was muted.
Analysts at Oppenheimer expected a “slight negative reaction” because sales growth tracked “below consensus Q4 GMV growth expectations” of 28 percent year over year.
According to CNBC, Shopify’s stock closed down 5.8 percent on Monday.
