Shopify Inc., an e-commerce company that went public four years ago, is now more valuable than Manulife Financial Corp. and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce — two financial institutions that have been around for more than a century.
Shopify eclipsed the financial heavyweights in market value on Wednesday after announcing plans to spend US$1 billion setting up a network of fulfillment centres in the U.S. and upgrades to its tools merchants use to sell products. Shopify traded at $438.24 a share at 1 p.m. in Toronto on Thursday, giving it a market value of $48.8 billion and making the 12th biggest publicly traded company in Canada. Manulife was at $46.7 billion and CIBC at $46.4 billion.
The Ottawa-based company has surged 132 per cent this year, the top-performer on the S&P/TSX and a bigger advance than any stock on the S&P 500.