Shares of Shopify Inc. were rocketing 11% in Thursday’s premarket action after the e-commerce company reported a surprise adjusted profit and announced the sale of its logistics business. The company posted comprehensive income of $77 million, or 5 cents a share, whereas it posted a comprehensive loss of $15 billion, or $1.17 a share, in the year-earlier quarter. The company logged adjusted earnings per share of 1 cent, down from 2 cents a year before, while analysts tracked by FactSet were modeling a 4-cent loss on the metric. Revenue rose to $1.51 billion from $1.20 billion, while analysts had been looking for $1.44 billion. Gross merchandise volume increased to $49.6 billion, up 15% from a year before. Separately, Chief Executive Tobi Lutke said in a blog post that “after today Shopify will be smaller by about 20% and Flexport will buy Shopify Logistics.” He further noted that logistics was “clearly a worthwhile side quest for us” but that “[m]aking the global supply chains efficient and software addressable is Flexport’s main quest and so this is the perfect home for this part of Shopify.”
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