The e-commerce platform is about as big now as Amazon was in 2007. But does the stock give buyers the same room to grow?
The e-commerce platform is about as big now as Amazon was in 2007.
But does the stock give buyers the same room to grow?
Investors who bought Amazon (AMZN -1.87%) stock at the end of 2007 have watched their shares climb over 50-fold since then. It's natural to ask what e-commerce company could do something similar next.
With its stock near a record, Shopify (SHOP -4.84%) is a clear candidate. Shares of the e-commerce software company closed at a record $179.22 earlier this week, and they trade around $170 as I write.
And on size alone, the comparison works surprisingly well. Shopify's revenue for the last 12 months was about $13.3 billion. Amazon's revenue in 2007 was $14.8 billion.
But Shopify isn't built the way Amazon was, and its stock isn't valued the way Amazon's was in 2007. For anybody buying shares today, I think the second difference matters most.
Shopify is growing like Amazon did
Amazon's 2007 was a strong year. Its revenue climbed 39%, and its free cash flow, or the cash Amazon had left after paying for capital spending, more than doubled to $1.18 billion, crossing $1 billion for the first time.
Shopify's growth looks similar, and it's been accelerating. Showing how much faster merchants are selling through the platform, Shopify's gross merchandise volume (GMV, the total value of orders placed through Shopify) grew 20% in 2023, 24% in 2024, and 29% in 2025. It's also cleared 30% year over year in each of the last four quarters. In the second quarter of 2026, GMV rose 32% year over year to around $116 billion, after 35% growth in the first quarter, and revenue climbed 34%.
Shopify's already ahead on cash. Its free cash flow for the last 12 months came to around $2.4 billion, up about 29% from the year-ago period -- and about twice Amazon's 2007 number, on a bit less revenue. That's a free cash flow margin of around 18%, against about 8% for Amazon in 2007.
Averytin News Financial update.