Shopify missed revenue for first time in four years, AI orders tripled

AI chat windows now send shoppers to Shopify product pages three times as often as a normal web search. That number comes from Shopify's third-quarter earnings call. BetaKit reports that AI-driven orders on Shopify tripled year over year in the same quarter. AI traffic across the platform doubled.

The numbers came out on an earnings call Tuesday morning. They sit alongside Shopify's first revenue miss in four years. BetaKit reports that the Ottawa company posted $3.74 billion in revenue for the quarter. Analyst estimates had been between $3.75 billion and $3.77 billion. Bloomberg, cited by BetaKit, said this was Shopify's first miss of the analyst range in four years.

Shopify shares opened about nine percent down on both the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq. BetaKit reports that they recovered to about four percent down by late morning.

What Shopify said the agent numbers mean

Shopify president Harley Finkelstein told the call about shoppers using personal agents to buy for them, BetaKit reports. He called it "the first time we saw shoppers experimenting with delegated purchasing through personal agents". He said the volume of agentic payments is still small. He called the AI traffic figures "early signals", not a settled result. Reveneau would add a question. A ratio with no base number only tells a reader which way the line is moving. Tripled from what?

Shopify connected to Meta's consumer AI agent Muse after Muse launched in September. BetaKit reports that Shopify also gave Muse access to the merchant side. The agent can now set up and manage a store on its own. Shop Pay works as the checkout for Muse and other agents, the same article says.

The figure that is not a ratio

Gross merchandise volume was $119 billion for the quarter. That is a 29 percent rise year over year. Barron's, cited by BetaKit, reported that this came in below analyst expectations. Net income was $462 million, 75 percent higher than a year ago. That number includes a $122 million paper loss on equity investments. Earnings per share were $0.49, above analyst projections. Free cash flow margin was 22 percent.

Thanos Moschopoulos at BMO Capital Markets told BetaKit the market reaction was about the softer GMV and the revenue miss. He said the data showed "some early indication that agentic commerce is driving incremental, high-conversion traffic to their merchants". That is close to what Shopify itself said, from an analyst with his own model.

A commerce team that built an agent surface this year now has a reference point for conversion. A multiple of three against search is a large number if the base is real traffic. BetaKit reports that Shopify does not publish agent orders in dollars. The dollar size of this new channel is not public. One thing a store can do this week is tag agent sessions in its own analytics. Then its next quarter does not depend on the platform's number.

Source

Shopify stock falls as Q3 revenue misses some analysts' expectations by Trevor Nichols for BetaKit.