Shopify shares plunge 18% on weak guidance

Shopify reported first-quarter earnings and sales on Wednesday that were ahead of Wall Street expectations, but it gave a downbeat forecast for the current quarter.

Shares dropped as much as 18% in premarket trading.

Here’s how the company did for the quarter, compared with consensus expectations from LSEG:

• Earnings per share: 20 cents adjusted vs. 17 cents expected
• Revenue: $1.86 billion vs. $1.85 billion expected

Gross margins for the second quarter are expected to decrease by about 50 basis points compared to the first quarter, as a result of the sale of Shopify’s logistics business to freight forwarder Flexport last May.

Shopify said it expects second-quarter revenue to grow at a high-teens percentage rate year-over-year, a slowdown from the previous period. The company has posted year-over-year revenue growth in the low-to-mid twenties for the past six quarters. Second-quarter revenue would grow in the “low-to-mid-twenties” year-over-year when adjusting for the divestiture of the logistics business, Shopify said.

The company reported a net loss of $273 million, or 21 cents a share, compared with a profit of 68 million, or 5 cents a share, during the year-ago quarter.

Shopify, which makes tools for companies to sell products online, said gross merchandise volume, or the total volume of merchandise sold on the platform, increased 23% to $60.9 billion. That surpassed consensus expectations of $59.5 billion, according to StreetAccount.