Shopify comes home to Canada to ring the opening bell at the TSX

After opening the New York Stock Exchange last Thursday, Ottawa’s Shopify (Shopify Stock Quote, Chart, News: TSX:SH, NYSE:SHOP) got a chance to take a victory lap in its home country by ringing the opening bell at the Toronto Stock Exchange.

The e-commerce company exploded out of the gate Thursday, closing up more than 50 per cent. It then added another 10 per cent on Friday, and was up slightly again yesterday on the TSX, on a day when the U.S. markets were closed for Memorial Day.

But despite his new found wealth CEO Tobias Lütke sounded like he wasn’t exactly ready to splurge on a Maybach or a Gulfstream G650.

“I am feeling very, very lucky right now,” he told the Globe and Mail. “The only time in the last year where I’ve thought about this is when I read The Globe, talking about my net worth. It is not something that motivates me, so I don’t particularly care about money. I care about working on interesting problems and Shopify is this gift that keeps on giving for working on interesting problems with amazing people. I know that sounds like something like a PR agency would put together, but this is the way I think about it in reality.

In April, Shopify announced it had filed for an initial public offering of up to $100 million, with Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and RBC Capital Markets as lead managers. The company then increased the range of its IPO to (U.S.) $17.00, from the $14.00 to $16.00 range it had initially guided, and expanded its financing to $131-million.

Founded in 2004, Shopify now counts more than 100,000 retail customers from 150 countries, from small boutique retailers to Fortune 500 companies like IBM and General Electric. The company claims to have processed over $5 billion worth of transactions last year, using its easily deployed sales processing platform. The company’s revenue has risen from $23.7 million in 2012 to $105 million in 2014.

At press time, shares of Shopify on the TSX were down 0.7% to $37.00.