Shopify (SHOP) Q1 2025 earnings call transcript

Good morning, and thank you for joining Shopify's first quarter 2025 conference call. I am Kerry Gillard, Head of Investor Relations, and joining us today are Harley Finkelstein, Shopify's President, and Jeff Hoffmeister, our CFO. After their prepared remarks, we will open it up for your questions. We will make forward-looking statements on our call today that are based on assumptions and therefore subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected.

Underreliance should not be placed on these forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to update or revise these statements, except as required by law. You can read about these assumptions, risks, and uncertainties in our press release this morning, as well as in our filings with the U. S. and Canadian regulators. We will also speak to adjusted financial measures, which are non-gap and not a substitute for gap financial measures.

Reconciliations between the two are provided in our press release. And finally, we report in U. S. dollars, so all amounts discussed today are in U. S. dollars unless otherwise indicated.

With that, I will turn the call over to Harley.

Thanks, Kerry, and thanks to everyone for being here today. Let's start with the obvious. Today's market is uncertain. As the platform that powers global commerce were, of course, monitoring for potential slowdowns. But our data through April shows the little evidence of that. It's still early to assess the full impact of the current trade environment. However, Q1 saw our trend for consistent quarterly growth continue, and more on that in a minute.

First, I want to say this. Shopify is built for agility, and in many ways, these days are just like any other. We're here to help merchants of all sizes absorb change rapidly and at scale. This strategy does not change as the landscape underneath us continues to shift. So as we sit here today, we cannot predict what administrations around the world will do. But what Shopify can do is continue to be the guardians of our merchants. We show up, we build, we ship, and we make commerce better for everyone, from entrepreneurs to the largest of enterprises.

Now, it is not hyperbole to say that businesses do better on Shopify. It is a fact. Since 2015, growth rates for 38 out of 39 of our quarterly merchant cohorts have outperformed the overall e-commerce market. I want to repeat that. 38 of 39 quarterly Shopify cohorts have outpaced the market when it comes to growth. Think about that in relation to small and medium-sized businesses that are the backbone of every economy.

We help them scale as they leverage more of our products and services over time to drive consistent performance and growth. Simply put, businesses on Shopify are more resilient than businesses that are not on Shopify. That merchant resiliency, combined with our operational excellence, will continue to set us apart as we navigate market uncertainties ahead. I need to remind everyone of this. This is where Shopify's agility really comes into play.

We've built a business model that allows us to adapt very quickly and pull the right levers to manage through challenges. Those levers mean we can prioritize tools and support needed for merchants to thrive in any environment. We power adaptation at lightning speed, whether that means seizing new opportunities for growth or responding to changes like we're seeing today. Again, those building on Shopify are better prepared than those who are not.

And with that, the Q1 numbers speak for themselves, so I'll keep it brief. Coming off of a very strong 2024, in Q1 of 2025, revenue was up 27% and free cash margin hit 15%. We saw a real strength in key growth areas with offline GMV increasing 23% and B2B GMV delivering another triple digit quarter of growth up 109% from last year.

International GMV grew 31% and cross-border health study at 15% of GMV. And we saw continued growth across our merchants' GMV, from entrepreneur through enterprise. Balanced across both existing and new merchants to deliver a seventh consecutive quarter of GMV growth above 20%. This is what we mean when we say our business model is built for this. Our formula for growth remains the same.

Operational discipline plus a real commitment to innovation. Look at our free cash or profitability. Look at our operational efficiencies. We can be both disciplined and innovative. This is the operating model you have come to expect from us and should continue to expect to see from us moving forward. Okay, now with that out of the way, let's dive into what we've built to help our merchants adapt. We've shipped a lot and we've focused on areas that we can have a more immediate impact. Cross-border trade, making it easier to buy local, duties calculations, and shipping.

It is incredible what our team has done in just a few short months and this is just the beginning. Starting with cross-border trade, we've enhanced our managed markets products, giving US merchants more options with our merchant of records service for collecting and remitting duties and taxes while managing other markets independently. This means if new duties are announced, most merchants can achieve compliance within hours.

Next, let's talk about making it easier to buy locally. On the shop app, we introduced a feature that allows buyers to filter products by country. This promotes local businesses and enhances the shopping experience that's generated hundreds of thousands of unique sessions since it's role let alone.

Moving on to duties calculation. In February, we made our duties calculation available at checkout for all merchants and reduced its price to just 50 basis points. Moving on to duties calculation. In February, we made our duties calculation available at checkout for all merchants and reduced its price to just 0.5%, making one of the most affordable options in the market. By the end of March, the number of shops actively using this feature nearly doubled since January. And later this month, we'll introduce duty-inclusive pricing, allowing merchants to set international prices that include duties in the product price. This ensures transparent pricing from the start and helps customers avoid surprise fees at checkout.

And just this past week, we launched tariffguide. ai. This AI-driven tool provides duty rates based on just a product description and the country of origin. Sourcing the right products from the right country can mean the difference between a 0% and a 15% duty rate or higher. And tariffguide. ai allows merchants to do this in minutes, not days.

Finally, shipping and fulfillment. We are simplifying international shipping for merchants by enabling them to purchase prepaid shipping labels known as delivered duty paid or DDP directly from our platform and expect to onboard several carriers soon. Additionally, we've expanded our network of 3PL providers through the Shopify fulfillment network app. Enabling merchants to access more local warehouses for order fulfillment.

Utilizing local warehouses speeds up fulfillment times, reduces shipping costs and simplifies returns for buyers in those markets. What all this should tell you is that Shopify moves at a pace unlike anybody else, truly. Our reaction time to uncertainty is unmatched with the best engineers on the planet ready to tackle whatever lies ahead. Our obsession with unlocking every opportunity and filling every important gap in the system to give our merchants the best chance of success is one of our superpowers. Shopify is a different company moving rapidly towards what is next. We rolled out the shop app filter in less than a week and the duties calculation a check could update over a weekend, literally. The weekend after the tariff changes were announced, the team got to work and by Sunday evening, we were testing it for production.

This is who we are, a company that obsesses over our merchants by thriving on change and living at the cutting edge. This is why our merchants consistently outperform the market and this is why they trust us. Now, before handing it over to Jeff, I want to touch on some other products that are foundational to our long-term success.

Let's quickly take a closer look at how we're continuing to capitalize on these opportunities, starting with payments. Shopify payments continues to be our largest product offering and a key driver. We made great progress in Q1, with payments GMV penetration hitting 64%. We launched Shopify payments in 16 new markets, Mexico, Lithuania, Poland, Norway, Latvia, Hungary, Estonia, Malta, Croatia, Greece, Slovenia, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, and Gibraltar.

Now, I know that's a lot of names, but that's the point. At the end of 2024 and after a decade of offering payments, it was in 23 countries. With our Q1 expansion, we nearly doubled that, bringing the total to 39 countries now supported by Shopify payments. This is important because having a key product like payments available in more markets simplifies the onboarding process.

It offers merchants a streamlined payment solution that reduces fees and enhances security. Plus, features like Shopify improve conversion rates and provide greater convenience for buyers. Adding more products in more markets remains a key driver of our international growth. And with these country launches, even more merchants can process payments seamlessly in their home countries, which is crucial as tariffs and economic factors may complicate cross-border trade.

But we did not stop there. We also launched multi-currency payouts in 20 countries across Europe, allowing merchants to receive payments in their preferred currencies, essential for operating globally and minimizing the impact of fluctuating exchange rates. Now, as we look at the success of Shopify payments, it is clear how foundational it is to our shop products, the buyer facing side of Shopify that is all about making shopping simpler. One of the biggest advantages to our merchants is access to Shopify. And in Q1, Shopify GMV was up 57% from last year, processing over $22 billion in GMV. Within our core pillars of Shop, the Shopify component continues to be a key product offering that is working to drive up-market enterprise-level growth opportunities.

Businesses like Mattress Company, Purple, Lifestyle Brand, Johnny Woz, Fashion Icon, Lilly Pulitzer, and Footwear Giant Birkenstock are among the latest to integrate this solution into their sites. Just this week alone, we signed up to expand more tapestry brands on to utilize this component as well. Now, they started with just CoachOutlet. com, but because it worked so well, they are now rolling it out to online shops for coach, Kate Spade, and for the Kate Spade outlet.

This is more than just a passing trend. It is becoming an increasingly compelling pathway for large merchants to come to Shopify. This is where our journey may start with these large brands, but we are confident as we demonstrate success, we will unlock more opportunities to add even more of our powerful tools and solutions over time, enhancing their growth and capabilities on our platform.

Moving on to the other pillars within Shop. The ShopApp continued its momentum in Q1, hitting over 94% year over year growth in native GMV, an impressive acceleration from 84% growth last quarter, especially considering the seasonality of Q4. Shopee installments launched in early access to Canada, marking another important milestone in our global expansion with more countries on the horizon for later this year.

Okay, let's talk quickly about AI. AI is at the core of how we operate and is transforming our work processes. For those who have not seen it, I encourage you to check out Toby's recent company-wide email on AI that has now been shared publicly. At Shopify, we take AI seriously. In fact, it's becoming second nature to how we work. By fostering a culture of reflexive AI usage, our teams default to using AI first, reflexive being the key term here.

This also means that before requesting additional headcount or resources, teams are required to start with assessing how they can meet their goals using AI first. This approach is sparking some really fastening explorations and discussions around the company, challenging the way we think, the way we operate, and pushing us to look ahead as we redefine our decision-making processes. In the past couple of weeks, we built a dozen MCP servers that make Shopify's work legible and accessible.

And now anyone within Shopify can ask questions, find resources, and leverage those tools for greater efficiency. This reflexive use of AI goes well beyond internal improvement. It supercharges our team's capabilities and drives operational efficiencies, giving us agile. And as we continue to innovate, AI will remain a cornerstone of how we deliver value across the board. On the merchant-facing side of AI in Q1, key developments for Sidekick included a complete re-architecture of the AI engine for deeper reasoning capabilities, enhancing processing of larger business datasets and accessibility in all supported languages, allowing every Shopify merchant to use Sidekick in their preferred language.

And these changes, well, they're working. In fact, our monthly average users of Sidekick can need to climb more than doubling since the start of 2025. Now, this is still really early days, but the progress we are making is already yielding some really strong results from merchants, both large and small. Sidekick is yet another reason that merchants on Shopify will have an unfair advantage for whatever lies ahead.

OK, switching gears a little. Let's talk about the progress we are making in some of our key growth drivers, starting with international. We see the opportunity to capture market sharing every European market as well as in Asia and Latin America. In Q1, we saw Europe's GMV growth 36% year over year, which clearly shows that we are gaining traction and expanding our presence in this key region, led by the UK, Netherlands, and Germany. Now, I already mentioned some of the product features we are rolling out to merchants to navigate the current landscape, but we also continue to strengthen our foundation for international specific features with improvements to AI power translations and new privacy compliance functionality.

Now, these enhancements to the product combined with our continued investments in marketing are helping to further grow our reach and market penetration in these really important countries.

In our offline business, GMV was up 23% this quarter, thanks to the continued strong growth from our mid-market and multi-location merchants. We are also bringing on more established brands onto the platform, like FAO Shorts, Just Cozy, and the iconic Japanese watch company, Grand Seiko. Now, while this flexibility is really important, our true value goes beyond simply enabling these offline features. It lies in building trust and partnerships through our merchant's unified commerce journey, online, offline, and everywhere in between.

And a perfect example of this is our recent partnership with Alo, the athletic apparel brand that's absolutely crushing it. Now, they wanted to implement same-day delivery, so they approach us with this idea, and we obviously were on board to make it happen. By integrating with partners like Uber and DoorDash, Alo can now offer quick same-day delivery options, allowing customers near the retail stores to receive their gear really, really fast. This is exactly how we support our merchants in staying ahead of the game, and seizing every opportunity to grow. No matter what you want to do in your retail business, we default to yes on Shopify. Our efforts to move up-market are paying off, fueled by strong growth from high-volume brands like Viori, along with more recent additions like Barkbox, Brilliant Earth, and Toys RS.

This evolving landscape paired with our powerful go-to-market strategy creates a significant opportunity for us to attract even more brands to Shopify. Our platform is designed to handle changes, like navigating tariffs quickly and efficiently, making us the go-to choice for merchants of all sizes facing today's challenges. Agility and ease of use are now prerequisites for any modern commerce team, and Shopify is positioned not just as a tool, but as a strategic advantage in an unpredictable market, and that is why more global brands are choosing us. The value are ability to move swiftly, to deliver incredible value, and to provide scalable infrastructure, especially right now. We are in constant conversations with leadership teams and CEOs who recognize that the global economy is fluid, and they are seeking solutions that enhance their agility.

Across various industries, there is this renewed focus on cutting costs by eliminating inefficiencies and modernizing technology. And that is where Shopify really shines. Many legacy platforms are struggling. They're slow and restrictive, lacking consistent investment, unable to efficiently handle basic tasks like pricing updates or loyalty changes, and custom-built systems often prove just as brittle under pressure. As businesses face these challenges, Shopify is becoming the preferred choice for those looking to thrive at scale.

The diversity of businesses we are signing from computer and gaming giants to household appliance brands, sporting goods, and iconic fashion labels demonstrates the strength and resilience of our merchant base and the power of our platform. Additionally, in Q1, one of the largest apparel at Footwear conglomerates, VF Corp, sign up to bring eight of their well-known brands to Shopify, including Dickies, Ultra Running, Kipling, and Icebreaker. And two of their brands, Jansport and Eastpac, have already launched, and we cannot wait to bring the others onto our platform.

And in the past two weeks alone, even after the tariff announcements, brands continue to sign. And one of those is Fallout Higher Education Group, the multi-billion dollar company managing campus bookstores at over 1,000 colleges and universities across North America. And in Europe, we sign Caring Beauty, the beauty brand division of luxury fashion houses like Alexander McQueen, Valencia, Aga, and Creed.

We are incredibly proud to support a world-renowned group as they unify their customer experience across channels by leveraging Shopify's B2B, B2C, and point of sale solutions. Now, this broad spectrum of verticals, not only strengthens our platform, but also reduces reliance on any single market, vertical, or customer, allowing us to navigate market fluctuations and seize multiple growth opportunities with confidence.

We've also seen a really impressive line of brands launching incredible online businesses on Shopify so far this year, including stationary company from Barnes & Noble, Paper Source, luxury fashion brand from LVMH, JW Anderson, luggage and travel business away, well-in-the-technology company, TheraBody, auto supply store and manufacturer can't automotive, and apparel and accessory retailer life is good. So to close, Q1 was a testament to the sustainable business model we've built, a model that's founded on supporting our merchants.

Their success drives our success. This is who we are, and this is why we exist. Shopify thrives on change. It's in our DNA, and it has positioned us uniquely to overcome obstacles and adapt to new climates. It is quite simple. Our success boils down to three key principles, and I can assure you that our priorities will remain just as clear in the future as they are right now.

First, everything we do is merchant first. There are needs to drive every product enhancement and every decision we make. Second, we've demonstrated an incredible ability to pivot when merchants need us most, adapting swiftly to challenges. Our resilience in turn ensures our merchants remain resilient too. And third, our operating discipline provides the flexibility we need to deliver unmatched value while balancing profitability and long-term growth.

This is a very durable business model, and it is also how the very best companies are built, by staying grounded in our purpose and committed to our mission. And we look forward to sharing our journey with you in the quarters to come. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Jeff.

Thanks, Harley. Another very strong quarter for us. Q1 marks our eighth straight quarter of delivering pro forma revenue growth of 25% are greater, seventh consecutive quarter of GMV growth rate exceeding 20%, and seventh consecutive quarter of double digit free cash flow margins.

Before I dive into the Q1 results, I want to build on Harley's comments regarding our key principles and link them to the growth framework that I laid out at our investor day and the strong GMV results that we've been posting. At that time, we talked about growing our merchant base, expanding the breadth of merchants we serve, and helping our merchants grow by giving them the tools they need to connect with and convert more buyers and run and grow their businesses, all of which are underpinned by continuous innovation.

Our consistent GMV performance demonstrates that we are delivering on all of these vectors. If you recall from our investor day, I highlighted that we have seen our US e-commerce GMV grow approximately two times overall US e-commerce quarter in quarter out, that trend has continued and strengthened, in fact, exceeding two x each of the past five quarters. Another demonstration of our success is that every quarterly cohort, other than one over the past 10 years, has outpaced US e-commerce since joining Shopify.

Within Europe, we are outperforming the market by an even wider margin, at even higher multiples of e-commerce growth. We've seen robust, greater than 30 percent GMV growth now for eight consecutive quarters, with that strength being broad-based across countries and merchant sizes.

We are executing exceptionally well, and our Q1 results reflect that. With that backdrop, let's discuss Q1 results, then some perspectives on tariffs, and finally our Q2 outlook.

All growth rates mentioned are year over year, unless specifically stated otherwise. GMV and Q1 was 74.8 billion, up 23 percent. This strong Q1 GMV was driven by same-store sales growth of our existing merchants, growth in our merchant base globally, continued strength in Europe, which grew 36 percent from both strong same-store sales growth and new merchant acquisition, with same-store sales growth being a larger contributor this quarter. And finally, offline growth of 23 percent, driven primarily by larger retailers joining the platform.

As we build a wider array of commerce solutions, our platform has become more attractive to merchants across various industries. Apparel and accessories remains our largest category, and that continues to perform well, but we are also experiencing strong growth in health and beauty, home and garden, and food and beverage. Additionally, smaller yet rapidly growing categories, like animals and pet supplies and arts and entertainment, showed particularly strong growth rates in Q1.

Revenue for the first quarter was up 27 percent, looking at the two components of revenue. Q1 merchant solutions revenue increased 29 percent, driven by the same factors as Q4, including continued strength in GMV, and increased penetration of Shopify payments, which reached 64 percent for the quarter.

Several factors powered the quarter's higher GPV penetration, including the strong performance of those merchants utilizing Shopify payments, an increasing percentage of which are Shopify plus, more merchants across the globe adopting payments, an expansion of payments both into more countries, and through the partnerships with PayPal and Clarno.

These items were partially offset by the continued strength of our business in Europe, which was a larger percentage of GMV, but where we have a lower GPV penetration in the North America. Which should become less of a headwind to payments penetration going forward, given the launch of payments in more countries in Europe.

Subscription solutions revenue grew 21 percent, with the three largest drivers being an increase in the number of merchants on our platform, and to a lesser degree, the benefit from the plus pricing change, and higher variable platform fees.

As a reminder, the changes to plus pricing took effect in February last year for new merchants, and a few months later for existing merchants. Given that the significant majority of the existing plus merchants chose to lock in three-year contracts at their existing rates, something that highlights the exceptional value we offer and the trust our merchants have in us, the majority of the benefit in Q1 came from new plus merchants.

Q1 2025, therefore benefited from two months of year-over-year comparability tailwinds. As I mentioned on our last call, we expect our subscription solutions grow to normalize to a rate lower than merchant solutions in 2025, given the benefits from the plus pricing changes tapering off and the lengthening of the paid trials.

Q1 MRR was up 21 percent year-over-year, with continued growth in each of standard, plus, and offline, with all three categories seen an increase in the number of merchants. Plus plans represented 34 percent of MRR for the quarter.

As I mentioned during our last call, in Q4 of last year, we started shifting to a three-month paid trial in certain markets, moving away from our predominantly one-month trials. The adjustment in trial lengths will make the quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year MRR comparisons tougher for you to assess from the outside, and these comparability issues will persist throughout 2025. But it is important to point out that we continue to see the benefits of moving to the longer trial period.

Some comparability issues aside, the trend is a good thing. Our testing has indicated that giving merchants a little more time to experiment with our platform increases the likelihood that they are setting themselves up for greater GMV success over the longer term. This point became clear through the testing that we did regarding how quickly merchants from various trial lengths achieved certain GMV milestones.

As a reminder, paid trials are just one of our merchant acquisition tools. Gross Profit was up 22 percent. Gross Profit for Subscription Solutions grew 19 percent, slightly less than 21 percent revenue growth for subscription solutions. The lower rate was driven primarily by higher cloud and infrastructure hosting costs needed to support higher volumes and geographic expansion. Although we are investing more in AI, it is not a significant factor in this increase.

Over the past five years, the gross margin for subscription solutions has centered around 80 percent plus or minus a couple hundred basis points in any given quarter, and we do not anticipate that trend changing in the near term.

Gross Profit for Merchant Solutions grew 24 percent, with gross margin coming in at 38.6 percent compared to 40.1 percent in Q1 of 2024. The decrease was primarily driven by the same factors that we saw in Q4, including lower non-cash revenues from certain partnerships, which carry a high gross margin, and the impact from the expanded partnership with PayPal.

Partially offsetting these headwinds was strong growth in our FX and tax products. This brings our overall Q1 gross margin to 49.5 percent compared to 51.4 percent in the prior year. Operating expenses were 966 million for the quarter, our 41 percent of revenue in line with our guidance. This 41 percent compares to 47 percent in Q1 2024 and 60 percent in Q1 2023.

We continue to make significant strides in building a lean, flexible, highly efficient team. Our continued discipline on headcount across all three of R&D, sales and marketing, and G&A, continues to yield strong operating leverage, all while helping us move even faster on product development, aided by our increasing use of AI. In marketing, we continue to lean in on our returns-based approach, executing the plan and leveraging the signals and data insights we have to quickly flex up and down our investments based on specific return metrics and payback periods. This strategy has not changed, and we believe it is continuing to serve us well.

Our platform has all the capabilities to grow with and accelerate merchant success. Marketing helps us get those merchants on our platform, allowing us to then grow with them for years to come. Transaction loans and losses, the smallest of the operating expense categories on our income statement, was 3 percent of revenues, consistent with Q1 of last year. This stability is largely due to higher volumes in our growing capital business.

We continue to grow our capital business and have recently introduced several product innovations that give merchants more choice for how they manage their loans and how they choose among various loan options. Operating income for the quarter was 203 million, or 9 percent of revenue, compared to 5 percent in Q1 of last year.

Stock-based compensation for Q1 was 123 million, and capital expenditures were 4 million for the quarter. Q1 free cash flow was 363 million, or 15 percent of revenue, in line with our outlook. The strength of our business enables us to achieve these attractive free cash flow margins, while still, importantly, invested in the future. To be clear, while we will continue to drive efficiency, we are ultimately still a growth company. We will continue to prioritize investing in key areas like our core platform, international, B2B, enterprise, and offline, as opposed to driving for higher free cash flow margins in the near term. It's simply the right thing to do with the immense opportunities we see ahead, but delivers a profitability level that we are proud of and believe we can maintain without compromising future growth.

A quick comment regarding a small but important acquisition that we closed in Q1. In March, we closed the acquisition of Vantage Discovery, which helps accelerate the development of AI-powered multi-vector search across our search APIs, shop, and storefront search offerings. This acquisition is one piece of a broader strategy to ensure that our merchants are able to continue meeting buyers, regardless of whether shopping or discovering great products.

Given the dynamic macro and trade environment, I'd like to share some observations about our merchants and our business before we turn to our Q2 financial outlook.

Starting with cross-border, cross-border GMV made up 15% of total GMV and Q1, consistent with previous quarters. Approximately half of that involves U. S. trade, balanced between inbound and outbound, while the rest is largely interregional within Europe. Cross-border levels have remained consistent throughout April and May to date, turning to the recent expiration of the de minimis exemption for goods from China is not expected to have a meaningful impact on Shopify in the near term, as only 1% of our overall GMV is related to imports from China that were subject to the exemption. That said, this expired less than a week ago, and we will continue to monitor its impact on our business.

The quality and diversity of our merchant base and the buyers they serve are also two key things to keep in mind and which help ensure resilience in the face of potential economic shifts. We support millions of businesses across various industries and verticals, addressing every corner of commerce. This diverse merchant base gives us a solid foundation to navigate changing market conditions, providing unique stability to our business. Certain sectors or segments will require more time to address or supply chains in this environment, but many others, also represented on Shopify, can move more quickly, mitigating some of the impact to Shopify from these disruptions. Merchants' pivots in response to trade concerns are wide-ranging, including decisions on inventory strategies, pricing changes, and sourcing selections.

Consider pricing as one example. While some merchants have raised prices, we haven't seen broad-based price increases yet. However, there remains a mix of strategies applied to navigate tariffs beyond just pricing. Merchants are considering when to change sourcing countries, when to buy inventory, or even adjusting product mix in their catalogs. From an end buyer perspective, in 2024, we had over 875 million unique online shoppers, spanning a broad range of income levels and brand loyalties. While all merchants proudly serve consumers across all income brackets, their buyer base skews towards higher income consumers, with more than half of their buyers in the U. S. having incomes exceeding $100,000. We believe this helps insulate our merchants from some of the potential swings in pricing or other market factors, as higher income consumers tend to be less price-sensitive.

We acknowledge the uncertainty ahead and are actively monitoring our data to help us support our merchants and adapt to whatever changes may arise. Keeping all this in mind, let's now turn to Outlook. Our GMV data shows continued strength through April and early May, reinforcing our confidence in outperforming the market. Our expectations for the second quarter of 2025 factor in the strength of our Q1 and what we are seeing in quarter to date for Q2. First on revenue. We expect Q2 revenue growth in the mid-20s, year over year, driven by many of the same factors that supported our strong revenue growth in Q1.

This outlook takes into consideration our best estimates of our performance in the context of today's trade and macroeconomic environment with potential headwinds largely offset by FX tailwinds. We expect Q2 gross profit dollars to grow in the high teens, driven by a mixed shift with more contribution expected from merchant solutions, primarily from payments followed by subscription solutions. The ongoing strength of our lower margin payment product and the accounting impact from PayPal combined with the impact from changes to the paid trial links are key factors in this growth. These dynamics in terms of gross profit dollar mixed shifts are likely to persist, resulting in gross profit dollar growth at a great lower than revenue growth. We anticipate that our Q2 operating expenses will be 39% to 40% of revenues, which represents a 200 to 300 basis points improvement over Q2 last year, when excluding the reversal of the $55 million legal accrual from the prior year.

The factors contributing to our expense leverage in Q1 are expected to persist into Q2 as we stay vigilant on headcount, reflectively use AI to multiply our effectiveness, and concurrently invest in high return areas like marketing. On a dollar basis, operating expenses are increasing both year over year and quarter over quarter, primarily driven by expectations around higher marketing spend that I just discussed.

Moving to stack based compensation, Q2 SBC is expected to be $120 million. Finally, on free cash flow. For Q2, we expect our free cash flow margin to be in the mid teens, similar to Q1 of 2025, as we continue to focus on driving growth, not optimizing for near-term margin. We believe that the free cash flow margin profile that we have achieved over the past several quarters strikes the right balance between profitability and investments in building the best products for our merchants today and into the future. Simply too many compelling growth opportunities ahead.

To close, we are delivering growth across multiple products, multiple geographies, and multiple merchant sizes and types, all while being disciplined on expenses, but thoughtfully investing for Shopify's continued growth. The more the environment changes, the clearer it becomes the businesses of all sizes that they need a platform that can adapt, scale, and pivot. Shopify is that platform. And with that, I'll turn the call back over to Kerry.

Thanks, Jeff. We will now take your questions. Please use the raise hand feature in Zoom to ask your question. If you're dialing in by phone, you will need to press star nine to join the queue and star six to unmute yourself. We ask that you limit yourself to one question so we can try to get to as many questions as possible.

Yeah, maybe I'll start and then Jeff can add if he has something. Look, I think it's still very early and we're learning as much as as I mean, because of our visibility, we're learning a ton. What I can tell you is that we have merchants everywhere of all sides of the cross pretty much every geography and pretty much every vertical. I mean, that is the benefit of the Shopify business model. There's no, you know, our merchant base is not concentrated in one area. So in terms of where they make their products, exposure really does vary by merchant. Some are impacted more than others, but net net, we're not seeing any meaningful impact on GMV. And again, it's still pretty early.

One thing I would add also is if you think about the buyer perspective, in 2024, we had about 875 million unique buyers purchased from a Shopify store. And while it does span a broad range of income levels and certainly brand loyalties, because I think our merchants serve customers across every income bracket, more than half of the buyers in the US have incomes exceeding $100,000 to our merchants. And I think the scale and that diversity does help insulate our merchants and us by extension, we'll continue to monitor that. But so far, we're not seeing anything, any meaningful impact to GMV.

Yeah.

And so my, the only thing I would add or you alluded to is that incorporate into our views on guidance. It definitely is I put some comments in the prepared remarks around how we're thinking about both overall consumer spend as well as some impact from FX. That's all factored in there. So, and as I also mentioned, we've seen strength through April. We've seen strength in the early May. So it's continuation of all the things that we saw on Q1, which was a very good quarter. And we feel good as we think about the consistency of performance. When you look at what we've laid out for Q2 and think about what we did in Q1, as well as we've done over the last couple of years in terms of the consistent revenue growth in the margins and the GMV deliverance, we put all that into perspective.

Yeah, I don't is it relates to we alluded to both I mentioned just a moment ago that both April and May have been strong in terms of what we've seen in GMV performance. It's obviously a dynamic environment. It's still too early to tell. I think in terms of where this is all going to play out both in terms of the quantum and the timing of the tariffs. But again, I would say that we're roughly a month into the escalation of tariffs and we continue to see strength in GMV. But as we look at the guidance we gave in Q2, it obviously assumes continued strong performance. In terms of exact detail in China, we don't have anything more to give on that at the moment.

Yeah, I mean, SMB has been consistently very strong. We haven't seen any changes there. In fact, I would actually argue with you on the larger merchant side. Actually, I think a lot of what we're seeing at least is that many legacy commerce platforms are actually being exposed is pretty slow and pretty restrictive. Some of these older legacy platforms that large retailers are on, they can't even handle basic tasks like price updates or I heard something this week about loyalty changes being difficult or adjusting inventory on a more rapid basis.

And it's not just legacy systems, actually, what we're also hearing from is that larger retailers and brands with custom built or in-house platforms are realizing that those platforms are just as brittle and slow as especially right now. So as a result, I think actually brands are moving to and I think partially it's because they want to simplify complexity, they want to improve execution speed or reduce friction, but they also are looking for lower cost of ownership.

One of the things that I think we have become, well, a reputation to think Shoplight has it as well deserved is that our merchants are more resilient. We mentioned 38 to 39 of the merchant cohort since the IPO 10 years ago have performed better than the broader e-commerce market. But also as a responsibility, you know, we are building tools, this incredible clip, whether, you know, I think as soon as any talks of tariffs came out, we created a buy local filter over a weekend in the shop app, managed markets is evolved incredibly, duties, calculations, pricing, transparency.

So I think this actually, you know, one of the things we're seeing is that a lot of these larger, more legacy systems are using this opportunity to reevaluate whether or not they have the right commerce partner long term, again, not just because of flexibility, but also because of total cost for ownership. And and that's been really great. As I mentioned, we've had some incredible, some of the most iconic retailers and brands on the planet coming to Shopify the last quarter. And that pipeline is not slowed down at all.

And maybe I'll start just on the sort of AI internally, and then Jeff can talk a bit about on the financial impacts and and opportunities there. You know, I think all of you by now have hopefully saw Toby's note, AI is being built into the culture and frankly built in the DNA of how we operate. It is now a reflex that is expected of our 8,000 people that work with us. So we're really leaning into this, you know, even just in the last couple of weeks, we've built roughly a dozen MCP servers that pretty much make every single corner of Shopify's work legible, which means that everyone at Shopify now has more access to more information on a much more rapid clip.

Obviously, the vantage team coming in who are rock stars in AI are going to help take our search capabilities to the next level. So we don't necessarily talk about AI from the superpowers we can give with sidekick and magic to our merchants to make them far more effective, but even in terms of how we use it internally to make Shopify more effective in doing our day-to-day work, we think Shopify is best positioned to leverage that.

Yeah, and as it relates to the implication on margins, obviously AI will be one of the tailwinds that's hardly just alluded to that can multiply the effectiveness of the team. But it also dovetails into your question. I think, Bob, and as you're trying to think about, how does that, in terms of market opportunities, changes in this dynamic market, how does that all play out? I would say nothing's changed in our views on free cashflow margins and the power of this business. We like the free cashflow margins that we've achieved. We think this margin profile strikes the right balance of profitability and investing as we've alluded to. And we've obviously been really thoughtful and disciplined in terms of how we've got to this point.

So we will continue to exercise that discipline. But I would also say that the discipline allows us, can lead us to both cutback if the spending returns aren't there. For example, if some of the things on the marketing front change is the function of the market overall, but also lean into it, of course, which is the right thing to do if you see compelling opportunities, which are going to get great merchants on our platform and bring all the long-term value that they would bring. So I just, I think I fundamentally believe that best companies are built on focusing on the long-term and seizing these opportunities. So again, we worked hard to get here. We take that very seriously.

We have guardrails on the marketing spend, and we also think about guardrails on the profitability. But I think we are very good at finding early signal and adapting, and Arleigh-Lud did that in his comments. I think that's something we do exceptionally well. So we're going to remain focused on our merchants, getting great merchants on the platform, and again, nothing's changed in our philosophy here.

Yeah, let me just sort of underline that point, because I think it is a neatly Shopify thing. This is an area where we have real flexibility, given these sort of return-based returns-based approach to marketing. I think we are uniquely positioned with incredible visibility and signal to what's working, what's on. In some parts of our growth engine, we can actually get a sense of changes to CAC within a week, and on the LTV side, the same type of thing. So that means we can flex up and flex on our spend based on solid data views that we can get back at this incredibly fast rate. And I think that that ability to allow us to sort of play with those levers, if we see opportunities to gain market share, we'll take them.

If we see things are changing, we can pull back as well. So as it relates to Q2, more of that, we're able to really view what's changing at a very, very fast clip, and then make very good decisions on either side, whether again, things are going one way or the other. I think that that is a real advantage to Shopify's growth and our funnel and our business model.

Thanks for your question, Michael. I'll start with your question on marketing. I'll hand it over to Harley. In terms of our marketing spend merchant ads, again, and I alluded to this in my comments earlier, the merchant acquisition engine is working very well. It's executing exactly as we would be hoping, and that ties back into the marketing spend. But there's been no change in the marketing philosophy in terms of the segments we're trying to target. Obviously, the majority of our spend, as we've talked about before, is performance-based marketing. It's supporting both the areas of growth, as well as all the areas that traditionally have been strongholds for us. So there's spend in the US, there's spend in Europe.

I alluded to my comments how well I think it's working in Europe as a function of both the product market fit we have and how the marketing is dovetailing to that. It's supporting point of sale, it's supporting SMB, it's supporting enterprise, it's supporting all the various elements. So I can't, I'd say there's no specific segment where we feel like, hey, we really need to focus on this one at the expense of others. It's discipline, return-based marketing to support all the great things we're doing. We really think as we think about the product as curves, the growth curves of all of our solutions, they're performing well and we're supporting them.

Yeah, let me just talk quickly about AI, and I think the question really is around AI shopping. The first thing is, I just kind of think I get a chance to hit this very often. I think Shop Play is widely recognized as one of the best companies globally for fostering like very long-term, very beneficial partnerships. You've seen that obviously with what we do with payments or some of the stuff we're doing with Buy Now, Pay Later or Cross-border. So you can, you know, one of the things we think about is that wherever commerce is taking place, Shopify will be there. And obviously one of the things we are seeing is that, you know, that more and more searches are starting on places beyond just, you know, somebody just a search engine.

That's a huge opportunity whereby more consumers are going to be searching for great products. And for us to qualify and then re-qualify to be the core retail operating system for the millions of stores that uses and many millions of more in the future, we have to make sure they show up everywhere where commerce is happening. So obviously we've talked about some of the partnerships in the past. You've seen we've done with perplexity and open AI. We will continue doing that. We're not going to run our product roadmap when it comes to when it comes to anything, frankly. But we do think though that AI shopping in particular is a huge opportunity. And you can expect that Shopify will be wherever consumers are looking to find incredible products.

Yeah, Keith, thanks for your question and thanks for your opening comments. We definitely think about flight equality and the opportunity for us to continue to differentiate ourselves from the pack here. On your gross margin question, let me break it into the two pieces of one, what we're seeing on the subscription solution side and then two on the merchant solution side and dovetail into some of your other pieces there. I alluded in my comments earlier on the subscription solution side. We've been pretty stable here in terms of how we think about it. It's been 80% plus or minus a couple hundred basis points generally higher rather than lower than that 80 basis points. But you look back several years now and it's been pretty consistent and I mentioned in my comments earlier that we don't see that changing.

So that's something from that vantage point which I think we continue to execute on really well is it relates to the gross profit levels or gross margin levels on merchant solutions. PayPal is a piece of it. We have not quantified it. Payments is one of the things of course that it continues to be a larger and larger percentage of revenues that has some headwinds on gross margin and is to the extent that larger merchant GMB's larger GMB merchants come on platform where of course that will have some headwinds to it. Payments though is obviously a good thing because it brings along a lot of other products that generally fall in the slipstream of what we're doing on that front and we talked about the strength of tax and capital and cross border and all those things.

So we did have a little bit of impact from the fall off of the non-cash revenues. You know we have some partnerships where there's non-cash revenue attached to those. One of those did roll off in Q4. That would be a I guess I'd come one time or just Q4 or Q1 adjustment. So the margin's going forward are going to be a mix obviously of everything we have going on with in merchant solutions.

Again we called out tax. Capital continues to grow well. Shopify FX continues to go really well. Those are all margin accretive. So I think we're in this period of time. You go back two years. There's a lot of good products we introduced. They're continuing to ramp. They're ramping really well just given the size of the overall business. It just takes a while for them to have a meaningful impact to meaningful time to move the needle only just given the size of payments given the size of everything else. So we feel really good about where we are in terms of delivering the gross profit dollars. The paid trial change because the last thing I would say the temporary piece for this year for sure is going to be subscription solutions.

Last couple of years we've had a little bit of an uplift as it relates to the pricing change. The paid trial change is really going to be a headwind for subscription solutions growth this year. But going into next year that will not be an issue. And again while there's some MRR comparability issues there's no net merchant ad issues at all. That's going really well.

Yeah, thanks for the question. It's a great question. So first of all I think Point of Sale, think about this is this incredible multi-year growth initiative for us. I think the results for the quarter show that we're making really great traction. I mean Q1, offline GV was 23% in the quarter and again getting these brands like just cozy FAO shorts, Grand Seiko. We're getting a lot of these much larger multi-location ones I mentioned on the enterprise side working with these companies like Follett right now that has a thousand stores across every university campus in America. So I think you'll need to see a lot of momentum especially with these large complex multi-location merchants. And part of the competitive advantage is just the fact that the feature set is amazing.

You have tap to pay expansion, having shipped the store capabilities. I mean the amount of features that we're rolling out for Point of Sale by itself just in the last two quarters is more than any of the other companies you mentioned roll out in multiple years. So just the velocity of product expansion is incredible. In terms of the go-to market, there's a couple things we are doing here. So obviously we're looking at new geographies, new verticals, new segments, but it's not just necessarily us go-to-market on our own. We also have incredible SIs we're working with. And I've mentioned that some previous calls are working with frankly the largest SIs on the planet that are bringing us to market as well.

And then I think probably the larger piece of why we're winning when it comes to Point of Sale and retail is that I don't think the future retail is going to be online versus offline where these incredible businesses think about different segments, channel conflict. They want a single place where they can view the entirety of all their business online and offline and potentially through AI and on social media platforms. And so this idea of Shopify being this unified commerce system that allows you to sell across every single channel and as more channels come to play again, we talked about AI a little bit on this call, that wasn't around two years ago. Now it is.

The fact you can default have that with Shopify, we think is an incredible opportunity. The other thing is like, you know, Alo came to us a couple weeks ago and said they actually want to offer same day delivery on their checkout, like their physical checkout. And so, you know, we worked with Uber and DoorDash to get that going for them within a matter of weeks. That velocity, that confidence that these large and legacy brands are giving to us because they know that we can be a long-term partner is allowing us to win this market. So, you know, I know the companies you mentioned, but I think from a product perspective and from an integration perspective with unified commerce, we'll continue to win business.

Yeah, we think it's a great opportunity. Look, the more channels that exist in the world, the more complexity it is for merchants and brands. That's where the value of Shopify really shines. So, if there's a new surface area, whether it's through AI agents or through just simply LLMs and AI wrappers, that consumer goes to to look for a new pair of sneakers or a new cosmetic or piece of furniture, they want to have access to the most interesting products from the most important brands. And those are all on Shopify. So, for us, we think that all of these new areas where commerce is happening is a great thing. It allows Shopify to increase its value.

And we're working with pretty much every single company that you have in mind to ensure that we are surfacing Shopify products, Shopify merchants' products when people are searching for it. So, we think it's a huge opportunity. One thing I will say also just before we end, because I think it's important and we're getting to closing time here, you know, I hope on this call, presumably all of you picked up the tone of Jeff in my comments, we believe that Shopify is performing quarter after quarter, both in terms of top line momentum, but also managing expenses and delivering profitability. But one thing I do want to say, just given the nature of the questions on this call that I want to reiterate, hopefully most of you already know this, but we're about to cross the 10-year mark since our IPO.

And one thing that I think most of you have come to understand, I found all of you is that Shopify was absolutely built for times like this, times where things seem uncertain or unclear. This is when we thrive, whether it was 2008, whether it was the pandemic or right now, Shopify was absolutely built with for agility. And I think these days for us are just like anything else. And, you know, our objective in these times is to shoulder complexity, so our merchants don't have to. It's how we built so much trust. And it's why I think our merchants are so damn resilient. But for us as a company, we operate very well in these environments.

And we have the right levers to adjust on a dime, but we can also seize huge opportunities if and when they arise and grow our business. So, I think it's precisely in times like this that we can demonstrate that those building on Shopify are simply better prepared than those that are not. And with that, I just want to thank you all for joining the call. And for us, we'll get back to building the future of commerce. So, thank you.