Strong holiday sales help Shopify beat expectations

The news: Shopify’s stronger-than-expected holiday season that included its merchants’ “most successful Black Friday-Cyber Monday selling period ever” helped the ecommerce technology vendor close the year on a high note.

• Gross merchandise volumes (GMV) grew by 25.7% year over year (YoY) to $94.46 billion, outpacing FactSet’s consensus estimate of $93 billion.
• Revenues accelerated 31.2% YoY to $2.81 billion, topping analysts’ expectations of $2.73 billion.