A $10,000 Stake in Shopify Is Worth About $311,000 a Decade Later. The Business Grew Almost as Much as the Stock.

On Sept. 15, 2016, Shopify (NASDAQ:SHOP) stock closed at a split-adjusted $4.18 per share. As of this writing, shares trade around $130. That comes out to about 31 times the initial investment -- enough to make a $10,000 stake bought that day worth about $311,000 today.

And because Shopify does not pay a dividend, the share price did all the work.

For comparison, the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX:^GSPC) had an outstanding decade of its own. The same $10,000 in an index fund that tracks the benchmark, with dividends reinvested, would have become about $41,000 during that period.

Most investors would be delighted with that outcome. Shopify's was more than seven times better.

But the return is not the most interesting part of this story. The most interesting part is what generated it. Shopify's business grew almost as much as its stock did.

Image source: Getty Images.

The business grew almost as much as the stock

When Shopify closed the books on 2016, around 377,500 merchants were using its platform. In total, they sold $15.4 billion of goods that year (a number the company calls gross merchandise volume, or GMV), and Shopify brought in about $389 million of revenue, up 90% from 2015. Today, millions of merchants in more than 175 countries operate their businesses on Shopify. GMV hit $378 billion in 2025, nearly 25 times the 2016 figure. And revenue came to $11.6 billion, almost 30 times what it was in 2016.

Put another way, the stock's roughly 31-fold rise has mostly mirrored the growth of the business beneath it.

The growth keeps accelerating

Notably, the growth has not slowed down as the numbers have gotten bigger. GMV growth has accelerated for three years running, increasing from 12% in 2022 to 20% in 2023, 24% in 2024, and 29% in 2025. And the expansion is broad: offline revenue rose 27% in 2025, while international revenue rose 36%.

This year is off to an even faster start. In the second quarter, GMV rose 32% year over year to $115.6 billion. For perspective, merchants sold more than seven times as much on Shopify in one quarter this year as they did in all of 2016. Revenue grew 34% year over year to $3.6 billion. Free cash flow surged 55% year over year to $654 million.

GMV growth "accelerated on top of last year's already strong Q2 with solid results across all merchant sizes, channels, and geographies," chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister said in Shopify's August earnings release.

Profits showed up along the way, as well. In 2016, Shopify reported an operating loss of $37.2 million. In 2025, it produced operating income of $1.5 billion (up 37% from 2024) and more than $2 billion of free cash flow (cash flow from operations minus capital expenditures), good for a 17% free cash flow margin.

For a company still growing revenue about 30% a year, the profitability is arguably as remarkable as the growth. I've followed tech stocks for over 10 years, and few companies I've reported on have maintained growth like this at this size.

Too late to buy?

Could the coming 10 years look anything like the last 10? I don't think investors should count on it.

Size is one reason. Percentage growth tends to get harder as the base expands, and Shopify's revenue base is now almost 30 times the size it was a decade ago.

Run the numbers on GMV and a repeat looks even harder. Equaling the last decade's nearly 25-fold increase would require merchants to sell more than $9 trillion of goods per year across the platform. Even a business executing this well could see its growth rates drift lower from here.

The price is the other. Even with shares well below their 52-week high (off about 29%), the stock has a forward price-to-earnings ratio of about 53, based on the earnings per share it is expected to produce next year.

A price-to-earnings multiple that high only adds up if Shopify can keep growing quickly for years to come. Effectively, anyone buying today is paying now for growth the company hasn't achieved yet.

Granted, Shopify has cleared high bars before -- the past decade is the proof. And I think the business may well keep growing at an impressive rate. But the stock's valuation leaves little room for disappointment. In the end, I would wait for a lower price before buying the stock.

Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Shopify. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.