Shopify Inc

NYSE:SHOP

Q1-2025 Earnings Call

[Carrie Gillard, executive]

Good morning, and thank you for joining Shopify's First Quarter 2025 Conference Call. I am Carry Gillard, Head of Investor Relations. And joining us today are Harley Finkelstein, Shopify's President; and Jeff Hoffmeister, our CFO. After their prepared remarks, we will open it up for your questions.

We will make forward-looking statements on our call today that are based on assumptions and therefore, subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Undue reliance should not be placed on these forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to update or revise these statements, except as required by law. You can read about these assumptions, risks and uncertainties in our press release this morning as well as in our filings with the U.S. and Canadian regulators. We'll also speak to adjusted financial measures, which are non-GAAP and not a substitute for GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations between the 2 are provided in our press release.

And finally, we report in U.S. dollars. So all amounts discussed today are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise indicated.

With that, I will turn the call over to Harley.

[Harley Finkelstein, executive]

Thanks, Carrie, and thanks to everyone for being here today.

Let's start with the obvious. Today's market is uncertain. As the platform that powers global commerce, we're, of course, monitoring for potential slowdowns, but our data through April shows a little evidence of that. It's still early to assess the full impact of the current trade environment. However, Q1 saw our trend for consistent early growth continue and more on that in a minute.

First, I want to say this. Shopify is built for agility. And in many ways, these [indiscernible] are just like any other. We're here to help merchants of all sizes, absorb change rapidly and at scale. This strategy does not change as the landscape underneath us continues to shift. So as we sit here today, we cannot predict what administrations around the world will do. But what Shopify can do is continue to be the guardians of our merchants. We show up, we build, we ship, and we make commerce better for everyone from entrepreneurs to the largest of enterprises.

Now it is not hyperbole to say that businesses do better on Shopify. It is a fact. Since 2015, growth rates for 38 out of 39 of our quarterly merchant cohorts have outperformed the overall e-commerce market. I want to repeat that. 38 of 39 quarterly Shopify cohorts have outpaced the market when it comes to growth. Think about that in a relation to small- and medium-sized businesses that are at the backbone of every economy. We help them scale as they leverage more of our products and services over time to drive consistent performance and growth. Simply put, businesses on Shopify are more resilient than businesses that are not on Shopify. That merchant resiliency, combined with our operational excellence will continue to set us apart as we navigate market uncertainties ahead. I need to remind everyone of this. This is where Shopify's agility really comes into play. We've built a business model that allows us to adapt very quickly and pull the right levers to manage through challenges. Those levers mean we can prioritize tools and support needed for merchants to thrive in any environment. We power adaptation at lightning speed, whether that means seizing new opportunities for growth or responding to changes like we're seeing today. Again, those building on Shopify are better prepared than those who are not.

And with that, the Q1 numbers speak for themselves. So I'll keep it brief. Coming off of a very strong 2024, in Q1 of 2025, revenue was up 27% and free cash flow margin hit 15%. We saw real strength in key growth areas with offline GMV increasing 23% and B2B GMV delivering another triple-digit quarter of growth, up 109% from last year. International GMV grew 31% and cross-border health study at 50% of GMV, and we saw continued growth across our merchant GMV from entrepreneur through enterprise. Balanced across both existing and new merchants to deliver a seventh consecutive quarter of GMV growth above 20%. This is what we mean when we say our business model is built for this. Our formula for growth remains the same. Operational discipline plus a real commitment to innovation. Look at our free cash flow profitability, look at our operational efficiencies. We can be both disciplined and innovative. This is the operating model you have come to expect from us and should continue to expect to see from us moving forward.

Okay. Now with that out of the way, let's dive into what we've built to help our merchants adapt. We've shipped a lot, and we focused on areas that we can have a more immediate impact, cross-border trade, making it easier to buy local, duties calculations and shipping. It is incredible what our team has done in just a few short months, and this is just the beginning. Starting with cross-border trade. We've enhanced our managed markets products, giving U.S. merchants more options with our merchant of record service for collecting and remitting duties and taxes while managing other markets independently. This means if new duties are announced, most merchants can achieve compliance within hours.

Next, let's take about making it easier to buy locally. On the Shop app, we introduced a feature that allows buyers to filter products by country. This promotes local businesses and enhances the shopping experience that's generated hundreds of thousands of unique sessions since its rollout alone.

Moving on to duties calculation. In February, we made our duties calculation available at checkout for all merchants and reduce its price to just 50 basis points -- moving on to duties calculation. In February, we made our duties calculation available at checkout for all merchants and reduce its price to just 0.5%, making 1 of the most affordable options in the market. By the end of March, the number of shops actively using this feature nearly doubled since January. And later this month, we'll introduce duty inclusive pricing, allowing merchants to set international prices that include duties in the product price. This ensures transparent pricing from the start and helps customers avoid surprise fees at checkout. And just this past week, we launched tariffguide.ai. This AI-driven tool provides duty rates based on just a product description and the country of origin. Sourcing the right products from the right country can mean the difference between a 0% and a 15% duty rate or higher and tariffguide.ai allows merchants to do this in minutes, not days.

Finally, shipping and fulfillment. We are simplifying international shipping for merchants by enabling them to purchase prepaid shipping labels known as delivered duty paid or DDP directly from our platform and expect to onboard several carriers soon. Additionally, we've expanded our network of 3PL providers through the Shopify Fulfillment Network app, enabling merchants to access more local warehouses for oral fulfillment. Utilizing local warehouses, speeds of fulfillment times reduces shipping costs and simplifies returns for buyers in those markets. What all this should tell you is that Shopify moves at a pace unlike anybody else truly. Our reaction time to uncertainty is unmatched with the best engineers on the planet wanted to tackle whatever lies ahead. Our obsession with unlocking every opportunity and filling every important gap in the system to give our merchants the best chance of success is 1 of our superpowers. Shopify is a different company, moving rapidly towards what is next. We rolled out the Shop app filter in less than a week and the duties calculation a checkout update over a weekend, literally. The weekend after the tariff changes were announced, the team got to work. And the Sunday evening, we were testing it for production. This is who we are, a company that obsesses over merchants by thriving unchanged and living at the cutting edge. This is why our merchants consistently outperform market, and this is why they trust us.

Now before handing over to Jeff, I want to touch on some other products that are foundational to our long-term success. Let's quickly take a closer look at how we're continuing to capitalize on these opportunities, starting with payments. Shopify Payments continues to be our largest product offering and a key driver. We made great progress in Q1, with payments GMV penetration hitting 64%. We launched Shopify Payments in 16 new markets: Mexico, Lithuania, Poland, Norway, Latvia, Hungary, Estonia Malta, Croatia, Greece, Slovenia, Cyprus, Bulgaria, LiechtenStein, Luxembourg and Gibraltar. Now I know that's a lot of names, but that's the point. At the end of 2024 and after a decade of offering payments, it was in 23 countries. With our Q1 expansion, we nearly doubled that, bringing the total to 39 countries now supported by Shopify Payments. This is important because having a key product like payments available in more markets simplifies the onboarding process. It offers merchants a streamlined payment solution that reduces fees and enhances security, plus features like Shop Pay improve conversion rates and provide greater convenience fires. Adding more products in more markets remains a key driver of our international growth. And with these country launches, even more merchants can process payments seamlessly in their home countries, which is crucial as tariffs and economic factors may complicate cross-border trade, but we did not stop there. We also launched multicurrency payouts in 20 countries across Europe, allowing merchants to receive payments in their preferred currencies, essential for operating globally and minimizing the impact of fluctuating exchange rates.

Now as we look at the success of Shopify payments, it is clear how foundational it is to our Shop products, the buyer facing side of Shopify, that is all about making shopping simpler. One of the biggest advantages to our merchants is access to Shop Pay. And in Q1, Shop Pay GMV was up 57% from last year, processing over $22 billion in GMV. Within our core pillars of shop, the Shop Pay component continues to be a key product offering that is working to drive upmarket enterprise-level growth opportunities. Businesses like mattress company Pearl; lifestyle brand, Johnny Was; fashion icon, Lilly Pulitzer and footwear giant Birkenstock are among the latest to integrate this solution into their sites. Just this week alone, we signed up to extend more tapestry brands on to utilize this component as well. Now they started with just coachoutlet.com, but because it worked so well, they are now rolling it out to online shops for Coach, Kate Spade and for the Kate Spade outlet. This is more than just a passing trend. It is becoming an increasingly compelling pathway for large merchants to come to Shopify. This is where our journey may start with these large brands, but we are confident as we demonstrate success, we will unlock more opportunities to add even more of our powerful tools and solutions over time, enhancing their growth and capabilities on our platform.

Moving on to the other pillars within Shop. The Shop App continued its momentum in Q1, hitting over 94% year-over-year growth in native GMV, an impressive acceleration and 84% growth last quarter, especially considering the seasonality Shop Pay installments launch in early access to Canada, marking another important milestone in our global expansion with more countries on the horizon for later this year.

Okay. Let's talk quickly about AI. AI is at the core of how we operate and is transforming our work processes. For those who have not seen it, I encourage you to check out Toby's company-wide e-mail on AI that has now been shared publicly. At Shopify, we take AI seriously. In fact, it's becoming second nature to how we work. By fostering a culture of reflexive AI usage, our team's default in AI first, reflexive being the key turn here. This also means that before requesting additional headcount or resources, teams are required to start with assessing how they can meet their goals using AI first. This approach is sparking some really fastening explorations and discussions around the company. challenging the way we think, the way we operate and pushing us to look ahead as we redefine our decision-making processes. In the past couple of weeks, we built a dozen MCP servers that make Shopify's work eligible and accessible. And now anyone within Shopify can ask questions, find resources and leverage those tools for greater efficiency. This reflects the use of AI goes well beyond internal improvement. It supercharges our team's capabilities and drive operational efficiencies, [indiscernible] agile. And as we continue to innovate, AI will remain a cornerstone of how we deliver value across the board. On the merchant facing side of AI, in Q1, key developments for psychic included a complete rearchitecture of the AI engine for deeper reasoning capabilities, enhancing processing of larger business data sets and accessibility in all support of languages, allowing every Shopify merchant to use Sidekick in their preferred language. And these changes, well, they're working. In fact, our monthly average users of Sidekick continue to climb more than doubling since the start of 2025. Now this is still really early days, but the progress we are making is already yielding some really strong results from merchants, both large and small. Sidekick is yet another reason that merchants on Shopify will have an unfair advantage for whatever lies ahead.

Okay, switching gears a little. Let's talk about the progress we are making in some of our key growth drivers, starting with international. We see the opportunity to capture market share in every European market as well as in Asia and Latin America. In Q1, we saw Europe's GMV growth 36% year-over-year, which clearly shows that we are gaining traction and expanding our presence in this key region, led by the U.K., Netherlands and Germany. Now I already mentioned some of the product features we are rolling out to merchants to navigate the current landscape. But we also continue to strengthen our foundation for international specific features with improvements to AI power translations and new privacy compliance functionality. Now these enhancements to the product combined with our continued investments in marketing are helping to further grow our reach and market penetration in these really important countries.

In our offline business, GMV was up 23% this quarter, thanks to the continued strong growth from our mid-market and multi-location merchants. We are also bringing on more established brands onto the platform like FAO Schwartz, Just Cozy and the iconic Japanese watch company, Grand Seco. Now while this flexibility is really important, our true value goes beyond simply enabling these offline features. It lies on building trust and partnerships through our merchants unified commerce journey online, offline and everywhere in between. And a perfect example of this is our recent partnership with allo, the athletic apparel brand that's absolutely crushing it. Now they wanted to implement same-day delivery. So they approach us with this idea, and we obviously were on board to make it happen. By integrating with partners like Uber and DoorDash, Allo can now offer quick same-day delivery options allowing customers near their retail stores to receive their gear, really fast. This is exactly how we support our merchants in staying ahead of the game and seizing every opportunity to grow. No matter what you want to do in your retail business we default to yes on Shopify. Our efforts to move upmarket are paying off, fueled by strong growth from high-volume brands like VRE, along with more recent additions like Bark Box, Brilliant Earth and Toys "R" Us. This evolving landscape paired with our powerful go-to-market strategy creates a significant opportunity for us to attract even more brands to Shopify. Our platform is designed to handle changes like navigating tariffs quickly and efficiently, making us the go to choice for merchants of all sizes facing today's challenges. Agility and ease of use are now prerequisite for any modern commerce team. And Shopify is positioned not just as a tool, but as a strategic advantage in an unpredictable market, we value our ability to move swiftly to deliver incredible value and to provide scalable infrastructure, especially right now. We are in constant conversations with leadership teams and CEOs who recognize the global economy is fluid, and they're seeking solutions that enhance their agility. Across various industries, there's this renewed focus on cutting costs by eliminating inefficiencies and modernizing technology. And that is where Shopify really shines. Many legacy platforms are struggling. They're slow and restrictive locking consistent investment, unable to efficiently handle basic tasks like pricing updates or loyalty changes, and custom-built systems often prove just as brittle under pressure. As businesses face these challenges, Shopify is becoming the preferred choice for those looking to thrive at scale. The diversity of businesses we are signing from computer and gaming giants to household appliance brands, sporting goods and iconic fashion label demonstrates the symptom resilience of our merchant base and the power of our platform. Additionally, in Q1, 1 of the largest apparel and footwear conglomerates, VF Corp sign up to bring 8 of their well-known brands to Shopify, including Dickies, Ultra Running, Kipling and Ice Breaker. And 2 of their brands, JanSport and Eastpak, have already launched, and we cannot wait to bring the others onto our platform. And in the past 2 weeks alone, even after the tariff announcements, brands continue to sign. And 1 of those is Follett Higher Education group, the multibillion-dollar company managing campus bookstores at over 1,000 colleges and universities across North America. And in Europe, we signed Carrying Beauty, the Beauty brand division of luxury fashion houses like Alexander McQueen, Valencia Aga and Creed. We are incredibly proud to support to a world-renowned group as they unify the customer experience across channels, leveraging Shopify's B2B, B2C and point-of-sale solutions. Now this broad spectrum of verticals not only strengthens our platform also reduces reliance on any single market vertical or customer allowing us to navigate market fluctuations and seize multiple growth opportunities with confidence. We've also seen a really impressive line of brands launching incredible online businesses on Shopify so far this year, including stationary company from Barnes & Noble, paper source, luxury fashion brand from LVMH, JW Anderson; luggage and travel business, Away; wellness technology company, Therabody; auto supply store and manufacturer, Kent Automotive and apparel and accessory retailer, Life is Good.

So to close, Q1 was a testament to the sustainable business model we've built, a model is founded on supporting our merchants. Their success drives our success. This is who we are and this is why we exist. Shopify thrives on change. It's in our DNA and it's positioned us uniquely to overcome obstacles and adapt to new climates. It is quite simple. Our success boils down to 3 key principles. And I can assure you that our priorities will remain just as clear in the future as they are right now. First, everything we do is merchant first. Their needs to drive product enhancement and every decision we make. Second, we have demonstrated an incredible ablate to pivot when merchants need us most, adapting swiftly to challenges. Our resilience in turn, ensures our merchants remain resilient, too. And third, our operating discipline provides the flexibility we need to deliver unmatched value while balancing profitability and long-term growth. This is a very durable business model, and it is also how the very best companies are built, by staying grounded in our purpose and committed to our mission, and we look forward to sharing our journey with you in the quarters to come.

And with that, I'll turn the call over to Jeff.

[Jeff Hoffmeister, executive]

Thanks, Harley.

Another very strong quarter for us. Q1 marks our eighth straight quarter of delivering pro forma revenue growth of 25% or greater. Seventh consecutive quarter of GMV growth rate exceeding [Audio Gap] percent, and seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit cash flow margins.

Before I dive into the Q1 results, I want to build on all these comments regarding our key principles and link them to the growth framework that [Audio Gap] laid out at our Investor Day and the strong GMV results that we've been posting. At that time, we talked about growing our merchant base, expanding the breadth of merchant we serve and helping our merchants grow by giving them the tools they need to connect with and convert more buyers and run and grow their businesses, all of which are underpinned by continuous innovation. Our consistent GMV performance demonstrates that we are delivering on all of these vectors. If you recall from our Investor Day, I highlighted that we have seen our U.S. e-commerce GMV grow approximately to overall U.S. e-commerce quarter in, quarter out. That trend has continued and strengthened in fact, exceeding 2x each of the past 5 quarters. Another demonstration of our success is that every quarterly cohort, other than 1 over the past 10 years has outpaced U.S. e-commerce since joining Shopify. Within Europe, we are outperforming the market by an even wider margin, and even higher multiples of e-commerce growth. We've seen robust greater than 30% GMV growth now for 8 consecutive quarters with that strength being broad-based across countries and merchandises. We are executing exceptionally well, and our Q1 results reflect that.

With that backdrop, let's discuss Q1 results. then some perspectives on tariffs and finally, our Q2 outlook. All growth rates mentioned are year-over-year, unless specifically stated otherwise. GMV in Q1 was $74.8 billion, up 23%. This strong Q1 GMV was driven by same-store sales growth of our existing merchants, growth in our merchant base globally, continued strength in Europe, which grew 36% from both strong same-store sales growth and new merchant acquisition with same-store sales growth being a larger contributor this quarter. And finally, off-line growth of 23%, driven primarily by larger retailers joining the platform. As we build a wider array of commerce solutions, our platform has become more attractive to merchants across various industries. Apparel and accessories remains our largest category and that continues to perform well, but we are also experiencing strong growth in health and beauty, home and garden and food and beverage. Additionally, smaller yet rapidly growing categories like animals and pet supplies and arts and entertainment showed particularly strong growth rates in Q1. Revenue for the first quarter was up 27%. Looking at the 2 components of revenue. Q1 Merchant Solutions revenue increased 29%, driven by the same factors as Q4, including continued strength in GMV and increased penetration of Shopify payments, which treats 64% for the quarter. Several factors powered the quarter's higher GPV penetration, including the strong performance of those merchants utilizing Shopify payments, an increasing percentage of which are Shopify Plus, more merchants across the globe adopting payments and expansion of payments both into more countries and through the partnership with PayPal and Klarna. These items were partially offset by the continued strength of our business in Europe, which was a larger percentage of GMV, but where we have a lower GPV penetration in North America, which should become less of a headwind to payments penetration going forward given the launch of payments in more countries in Europe. Subscription Solutions revenue grew 21% with the 3 largest drivers being an increase in the number of merchants on our platform and to a lesser degree, the benefit from the plus pricing change and higher variable platform fees. As a reminder, the changes to plus pricing took effect in February last year for new merchants and a few months later for existing merchants. Given that the significant majority of the existing [Audio Gap] Plus merchants chose to lock in 3-year contracts at their existing rates, something that highlights the exceptional value we offer and the trust our merchants have in us, the majority of the benefit in Q1 came from new Plus merchants. Q1 2025, therefore, benefited from 2 months of year-over-year comparability tailwinds. As I mentioned on our last call, we expect our subscription solutions growth to normalize to liberate lower than merchant solutions in 2025, given the benefits from the Plus pricing changes tapering off and the lengthening of the paid trials. Q1 MRR was up 21% year-over-year with continued growth in each of standard, plus and off-line with all 3 categories seeing an increase in the number of merchants. Plus plans represented 34% of MRR for the quarter. As I mentioned during our last call, in Q4 of last year, we started shifting to a 3-month paid trial in certain markets, moving away from our predominantly 1-month trials. The adjustment in trial lengths will make the quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year MRR comparisons tougher for you to assess from the outside and these comparability issues will persist throughout 2025, but it is important to point out that we continue to see the benefits of moving to the longer trial period. Some comparability issues aside, the trend is a good thing. Our testing has indicated that giving merchants a little more time to experiment with our platform increases the likelihood that they are setting themselves up for greater GMV [Audio Gap]. Three, we continue to make significant strides in building a lean, flexible, highly efficient team. Our continued discipline on headcount across all 3 of R&D, sales and marketing and G&A continues to yield strong operating leverage, all while helping us move even faster on product development aided by our increasing use of AI. In marketing, we continue to lean in on our returns-based approach, executing to plan and leveraging the signals and data insights we have to quickly flex up and down our investments based on specific return metrics and payback periods. This strategy has not changed, and we believe it is continuing to serve us well. Our platform has all the capabilities to grow with and accelerate merchant success. Marketing helps us get those merchants on our platform, allowing us to then grow with them for years to come. Transaction loans and losses, the smallest of the operating expense categories on our income statement was 3% of revenues, consistent with Q1 of last year. This stability is largely due to higher volumes in our growing capital business. We continue to grow our capital business and have recently introduced several product innovations that give merchants more choice for how they manage their loans, and how they choose among various loan options. Operating income for the quarter was $203 million or 9% of revenue compared to 5% in Q1 of last year. Stock-based compensation for Q1 was $123 million, and capital expenditures were $4 million for the quarter. Q1 free cash flow was $363 million or 15% of revenue, in line with our outlook. The strength of our business enables us to achieve these attractive free cash flow margins while still importantly, invested in the future. To be clear, while we will continue to drive efficiency, we are ultimately still a growth company. We will continue to prioritize investing in key areas like our core platform, international, B2B, enterprise and offline as opposed to driving for higher free cash flow margins in the near term. It's simply the right thing to do with the immense opportunities we see ahead, but delivers a profitability level that we are proud of and believe we can maintain without compromising future growth. A quick comment regarding a small but important acquisition that we closed in Q1. In March, we closed the acquisition of Vantage Discovery, which helped accelerate the development of AI-powered multi-vector search across our search, APIs, shop and storefront search offerings. This acquisition is 1 piece of a broader strategy to ensure that our merchants are able to continue meeting buyers regardless of where the [Audio Gap] or discovering great products. Consistent with previous quarters, approximately half of that involves U.S. trade 1 between inbound and outbound, while the rest is largely interregional within Europe. Cross-border levels have remained consistent throughout April and May to date.

Turning to de minimis. The recent [ accretion ] of the de minimis exemption for goods from China is not expected to have a meaningful impact on Shopify in the near term. As only 1% of our overall GMV is related to imports from China that were subject to the exemption. That said, this expired less than a week ago, and we will continue to monitor its impact on our business. The quality and diversity of our merchant base and the buyers they serve are also 2 key things to keep in mind and which help ensure resilience in the face of potential economic shifts. We support millions of businesses across various industries and verticals, addressing every corner of commerce. This diverse merchant base gives us a solid foundation to navigate changing market conditions providing unique stability to our business. Certain sectors or segments will require more time to address their supply chains in this environment, but many others also represented on Shopify can move more quickly, mitigating some of the impact to Shopify from these disruptions. Merchants pivots in response to trade concerns are wide ranging, including decisions on inventory strategies, pricing changes and sourcing selections. Consider pricing is 1 example. While some merchants have raised prices, we haven't seen broad-based price increases yet. However, there remains a mix of strategies at play to navigate tariffs beyond just pricing. Merchants are considering when to change sourcing countries, when to buy inventory or even adjusting product mix in their catalogs. From an end buyer perspective, in 2024, we had over 875 million unique online shoppers, spanning a broad range of income levels and brand loyalties. While all merchants proudly serve consumers across all income brackets, their buyer base skews towards higher income consumers with more than half of their buyers in the U.S. having income exceeding $100,000. We believe this helps insulate our merchants from some of the potential swings in pricing or other market factors as higher income consumers tend to be less price sensitive. We acknowledge the uncertainty ahead and are actively monitoring our data to help us support our merchants and adapt to whatever changes may arise.

Keeping all this in mind, let's now turn to outlook. Our GMV data shows continued strength through April and early May, reinforcing our confidence in outperforming the market. Our expectations for the second quarter of 2025 factor in the strength of our Q1 and what we were seeing quarter-to-date for Q2. First, on revenue. We expect Q2 revenue growth in the mid-20s year-over-year driven by many of the same factors that supported our strong revenue growth in Q1. This outlook takes into consideration our best estimates of our performance in the context of today's trade and macroeconomic environment with potential headwinds largely offset by FX tailwinds. We expect Q2 gross profit dollars to grow in the high teens, driven by a mix shift with more contribution expected from Merchant Solutions, primarily from payments followed by subscription solutions. The ongoing strength of our lower-margin payment product and the accounting impact from PayPal, combined with the impact from changes to paid trial lengths are key factors in this growth. These dynamics in terms of gross profit dollar mix shifts are likely to persist, resulting in gross profit dollar growth at a rate lower than revenue. We anticipate that our Q2 operating expenses will be 39% to 40% of revenues, which represents a 200 to 300 basis point improvement over Q2 last year when excluding the reversal of the $55 million legal accrual from the prior year. The factors contributing to our expense leverage in Q1 are expected to persist into Q2 as we stay vigilant on head count reflectively use AI to multiply our effectiveness and concurrently invest in high-return areas like marketing. On a dollar basis, operating expenses are increasing both year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter primarily driven by expectations around higher marketing spend that I just discussed. Moving to stock-based compensation. Q2 SBC is expected to be $120 million.

Finally, on free cash flow. For Q2, we expect our free cash flow margin to be in the mid-teens. [indiscernible] Q1 of 2025 as we continue to focus on driving growth, not optimizing for near-term margin. We believe that the free cash flow margin profile that we have achieved over the past several quarters strike the right balance between profitability and investments in building the best products for our merchants today and into the future, simply too many compelling growth opportunities ahead.

To close, we are delivering growth across multiple products, multiple geographies and multiple merchant sizes and types, all while being disciplined on expenses, but thoughtfully investing for Shopify's continued growth. The more the environment changes, the clear it becomes the businesses of all sizes that they need a platform that can adapt, scale and pivot. Shopify is that platform.

And with that, I'll turn the call back over to Carrie.

[Carrie Gillard, executive]

Thanks, Jeff. We will now take your questions. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Samad Samana at Jefferies.

[Samad Samana, analyst]

Congrats on a really strong quarter. It's been a tough environment. Maybe Jeff or Harley, for either 1 of you, one of the things that we're trying to figure out is not just where what the GMV mix is for merchants, but maybe where merchants are sourcing the inventory that they're ultimately selling? And I appreciate all the disclosures that you gave, but how are you -- any ability to map where they're currently sourcing from, and how much through tariff exposure that they have? And have you factored that into -- like how are you balancing maybe potential demand destruction versus average order value going up. And I know that's a -- it's not a precise question, but to the extent that you can help illuminate that for us, that would be very helpful.

[Harley Finkelstein, executive]

Yes. Maybe I'll start and then Jeff if you add something. Look, I think it's still very early and we're learning as much as -- I mean, because of our visibility, we're learning a ton. What I can tell you is that we have merchants everywhere of all sizes across pretty much every geography and pretty much every vertical. I mean that is the benefit of the Shopify business model. There's no -- our merchant base is not concentrated in 1 area. So in terms of where they make their products exposure really does vary by merchants. Some are impacted more than others. But net-net, we're not seeing any meaningful impact on GMV. And again, it's still pretty early. One thing I would add also is if you think about the buyer perspective, in 2024, we had about $875 million unique buyers purchased from a Shopify store. And while it does span a broad range of income levels and certainly brand loyalties, because I think our merchants serve customers across different income bracket, more than half of the buyers in the U.S. have incomes exceeding $100,000 to our merchants. And I think the scale and that diversity does help insulate our merchants and us by extension. We'll continue to monitor that. But so far, we're not seeing anything -- any meaningful impact to GMV.

[Jeff Hoffmeister, executive]

Yes. And Samad, the only thing I would add and you alluded to is that incorporated into our views on guidance. It definitely is. I put some comments in the prepared remarks around how we're thinking about both overall consumer spend as well as some impact from FX, that's all factored in there. So -- and as I also mentioned, we've seen strength through April, we've seen strength in early May. So it's a continuation of all the things that we saw in Q1, which was a very good quarter, and we feel good as we think about the consistency of performance when you look at what we've laid out for Q2 and think about what we did in Q1 as well as we've done over the last couple of years in terms of the consistent revenue growth and the margins and the GMV deliverance, we put all that in perspective.

[Carrie Gillard, executive]

Our next question will come from Martin Toner at ATB.

[Martin Toner, analyst]

Is it possible for you guys to give us some more commentary around what has happened with your China-specific merchants in early May. Yes. I'd relates to -- we alluded to both -- I mentioned just a moment ago that both April and May have been strong in terms of what we've seen in GMV performance. It's obviously a dynamic environment. It's still too early to tell. I think in terms of where this is all going to play out, both in terms of the quantum and the timing of the tariffs, but again, I would say that we're roughly a month into the escalation of tariffs, and we continue to see strength in GMV. But as we look at the guidance we gave in Q2, it obviously assumes continued strong performance. In terms of exact detail in China, we don't have anything more to give on that at the moment.

[Carrie Gillard, executive]

Our next question comes from Rob Wildhack at Autonomous.

[Unknown Analyst]

A question on a new merchant acquisition. Harley, you highlighted a bunch of new features, tariff-related and other. I imagine those serve to further differentiate Shopify and the value prop. Against that, though, I could also see a scenario where given all the uncertainty out there, merchants are reluctant to make any big switch in their systems or their infrastructure. So how is the new merchant pipeline playing out, both in SMB and enterprise. And how has that changed at all over the last couple of months?

[Harley Finkelstein, executive]

Yes. I mean SMB has been consistently very strong, and we haven't seen any changes there. In fact, I would actually argue with you on the larger merchant side, actually, I think a lot of -- what we're seeing at least is that many legacy commerce platforms are actually being exposed is pretty slow and pretty restrictive. Some of these older legacy platforms that large retailers are on, they can't even handle basic tasks like price updates or I heard something this week about loyalty changes being difficult or adjusting inventory on sort of on a more rapid basis. And it's not just legacy systems. Actually, what we're also hearing from is that larger retailers and brands with custom builder in-house platforms are realizing that, those platforms are just as brittle and slow as -- especially right now. So as a result, I think actually, brands are moving to Shopify, larger bands moving to Shopify at even a higher clip. And I think, partially, it's because they want to simplify complexity. They want to improve execution speed, reduce friction, but they also are looking for a lower cost of ownership. One of the things that I think we have become well -- a reputation of think Shopify has, it is well deserved is that -- we -- our merchants are more resilient, we mentioned sort of 38 or 39 of the merchant cohorts since the IPO 10 years ago, have formed better than the broader e-commerce market. But also as a responsibility, we are building tools is incredible clip, whether I think as soon as any talk of tariffs came out, we created a biolocal filter over a weekend in the Shop App, managed markets is evolved incredibly due to these calculations, pricing transparency. So I think this actually -- 1 of the things we're seeing is that a lot of these larger more legacy systems are using this opportunity to reevaluate whether or not they have the right commerce partner long term. Again, not just because of the flexibility but also because of total cost of ownership. And that's been really great. As I mentioned, we've had some incredible -- some of the most iconic retailers and brands on the planet coming to Shopify the last quarter, and that pipeline has not slowed down at all.

[Carrie Gillard, executive]

Our next question comes from Bhavin Shah at Deutsche Bank.

[Bhavin Shah, analyst]

Jeff, Harley, you guys both alluded to on the call several times about your ability to lean into AI internally. And given this additional emphasis that you guys put on this starting this year. How is this impacting your kind of views on overall expenses relative to the prior commentary that you guys talked about on free cash flow margins? And then, Jeff, how willing are you to maybe adjust your marketing spend if you do see changes in merchant or consumer behavior?

[Harley Finkelstein, executive]

And maybe I'll start just on the sort of AI internally and then Jeff can talk a bit about on the financial impacts and opportunities there. I think all of you by now have hopefully saw Toby's note, AI is being built into the culture and frankly, built in the DNA of how we operate. It is now a reflex that is expected of our [ 8,000 ] people that work with us. So we're really leaning into this. Just in the last couple of weeks, we've built roughly a dozen MCP servers that pretty much make every single corner of Shopify's work legible, which means that everyone at Shopify now has more access to more information at a much more rapid clip. Obviously, the Vantage team coming in who are rock stars in AI are going to help take our [indiscernible] abilities to the next level. So we don't just necessarily talk about AI from the superpowers we can give with Sidekick and magic to our merchants to make them far more effective, but even in terms of how we use it internally to make Shopify more effective in during our day-to-day work, we think Shopify is best positioned to leverage that

[Jeff Hoffmeister, executive]

Yes. And as it relates to the implications on margins, obviously, AI will be 1 of the tailwinds that Harley just alluded to that can multiply the effectiveness of the team. But it also dovetails into your question, I think, Bob and as you're trying to think about how does that in terms of market opportunities, changes in this dynamic market, how does that all play out? I would say nothing's changed in our views on free cash flow margins and the power of this business. We like the free cash flow margins that we've achieved. We think this margin profile strikes the right balance of profitability and investing as we've alluded to. And we've obviously been really thoughtful and disciplined in terms of how we've gotten to this point. So we will continue to exercise that discipline. But I would also say that the discipline allows us can lead us to both cut back if the spending returns aren't there, for example, if some of the things on the marketing front changes the function of the market overall, but also lean into it, of course, which is the right thing to do if you see compelling opportunities, which are going to get great merchants on our platform and bring all the long-term value that they would bring. So I just -- I think I fundamentally believe that companies are built on focusing on the long term and seizing these opportunities. So again, we worked hard to get here. We take that very seriously. We have guardrails and marketing spend, and we also think about guardrails on the profitability. But I think we are very good at finding early signal and adapting and [indiscernible] alluded to that in his comments, I think that's something we do exceptionally well. So we're going to remain focused on our merchants, getting great merchants on the platform. And again, nothing changed in our philosophy here.

[Harley Finkelstein, executive]

Let me just underline that point because I think it is a uniquely Shopify thing. This is an area where we have real flexibility given these sort of returns-based approach to marketing. I think we are uniquely positioned with incredible visibility and signal to what's working what's on in some parts of our growth engine, we can actually get a sense of changes to CAC within a week. And on the LTV side, the same type of thing. So that means we can flex up and flex in our spend based on solid data views that we can get back at this incredibly fast rate. And I think that, that ability to allow us to sort of play with those levers, if we see opportunities to gain market share, we'll take them. If we see the things are changed, we can pull back as well. So as it relates to Q2, more of that, we're able to really view we're changing at a very, very fast clip and then make very good decisions on either side, whether again, things are going 1 way or the other. I think that, that is a real advantage to Shopify's growth in our funnel and our business model.

[Carrie Gillard, executive]

Our next question will come from Michael Morton at MoffettNathanson.

[Michael Morton, analyst]

Maybe a quick 1 for Jeff and a bigger picture 1 for Harley that I've asked before. Jeff with the 3-month trials and the slight step up in marketing spend, just if you could maybe dig a little deeper on who you're targeting with that a certain type of merchant, certain product, a certain geography, that would be great. And then for Harley, I've asked this before, but we're seeing it develop more actually a lot of search conversation this week in the news and Shopify has some really interesting partnerships with the LLMs. I was wondering if you're seeing any change yet in traffic generation sources for your merchant base? And then maybe a slight shift of the center of gravity of the legacy ecosystem that goes like feeds people from Google Search to Amazon, maybe pointing more consumers to DTC websites.

[Jeff Hoffmeister, executive]

So thanks for your question, Michael. I'll start with your question on marketing, and then I'll hand it over to Harley. There's no specific -- in terms of our marketing spend on merchant adds, again, the -- and I alluded to this in my comments earlier, the merchant acquisition engine is working very well. executing exactly as we would be hoping. And that ties back into the marketing spend. But there's been no change in the marketing philosophy in terms of the segments we're trying to target. Obviously, the majority of our spend, as we've talked about before, is performance-based marketing it's supporting both the areas of growth as well as all the areas that traditionally have been strongholds for us in this, so there is spend in the U.S. There's spend in Europe. I alluded in my comments how well I think it's working in Europe as a function about the product market fit we have, and how the marketing is dovetailing to that. It's supporting point of sale, it's supporting SMB, it's enterprise, it's supporting all the various [Audio Gap]. So I can't I'd say there's no specific segment where we feel like, hey, we really need to focus on this 1 at the expense of others. It's disciplined, return-based marketing to support all the gradings we're doing. But we really think as we think about the Product S curves, the growth curves of all of our solutions, they're performing well, and we're supporting them.

[Harley Finkelstein, executive]

Yes. Let me just talk quickly about AI, and I think the question really is around AI shopping. The first thing is, I just kind of want to say this because I don't think I get a chance of this very often. I think Shopify is widely recognized as 1 of the best companies globally for fostering like very long term, very beneficial partnerships. You've seen that obviously with what we do with payments or some of the stuff we're doing with buy now, pay later or cross-border. So you -- 1 of the things we think about is that wherever commerce is taking place, Shopify will be there. And obviously, 1 of the things we are seeing is that more and more services are starting on places beyond just some of just a search engine. That's a huge opportunity whereby more consumers are going to be searching for great products. And for us to qualify and then requalify it be the core retail operating system for the millions of stores that users and many millions of more in the future, we have to make sure that they show up everywhere where commerce is happening. So obviously, we've talked about some of the partnerships [indiscernible]. You've seen what we've done with perplexity and Open AI. We will continue doing that. We're not going to front run our product road map when it comes to anything, frankly. But we do think though that AI shopping, in particular, is a huge opportunity. And you can expect that Shopify will be wherever consumers are looking to find incredible products.

[Carrie Gillard, executive]

Our next question will come from Keith Weiss at Morgan Stanley.

[Keith Weiss, analyst]

Really appreciate the way you guys are kind of coming at this period of uncertainty in a period of stress and highlighting the quality of Shopify, and how -- and what we've seen historically is the high-quality companies tend to pull away from the pack in periods of stress. And I think you guys are doing a really good job of showing why Shopify is that high-quality company. And while you have the ability to pull away and gain market share, even in times when the macros are perhaps not a tailwind to you guys. So kudos on that, it's a great positioning. On the other side of the equation, though, gross margins is a key metric that software investors definitely look to, degradation in gross margins tends to break out investors to use the technical term, so can you maybe talk to us a little bit about the durability of these or sort of how long these gross margin pressures are going to persist, particularly maybe enumerate what's happening with the PayPal accounting change. Any sense you could give us like what the top line the revenue impact was there versus what the gross margin impact is? And just fundamentally, when will we see overall gross margin start to stabilize, or will we see overall gross margins start to stabilize sometime in the not too distant future.

[Jeff Hoffmeister, executive]

Yes, Keith, thanks for your question, and thanks for your opening comments. We definitely think about like the quality and the opportunity for us to continue to differentiate ourselves from the pack here. On your gross margin question, let me break it into the 2 pieces of; 1, what we're seeing on the Subscription Solutions side; and then 2, on the Merchant Solution side and dovetail into some of your other pieces there. I alluded in my comments earlier on the Subscription Solutions side, we've been pretty stable here in terms of how we think about it. It's been a 80% plus or minus a couple of hundred basis points generally higher rather than lower than that 80 basis points. But you look back several years now, and it's been pretty consistent. And I mentioned in my comments earlier that we don't see that changing. So something from that vantage point, which I think we continue to execute on really well. As it relates to the gross profit levels, the gross margin levels on Merchant Solutions. PayPal is a piece of it. We have not quantified it. Payments is 1 of the things, of course, that it continues to be a larger and larger percentage of revenues. That has some headwinds on gross margin and is to the extent that larger merchant GMVs, larger GMV merchants come on platform. Of course, that will have some headwinds to it. Payments though, is obviously a good thing because it brings along a lot of other products that generally fall in the slipstream of what we're doing on that front. And we talked about the strength of tax and capital and border and all those things. So we did have a little bit of impact for the fall off of the noncash revenue. As you know, we have some partnerships. We are -- there's noncash revenue [Audio Gap] 1 of those did roll off in Q4. That would be a, I guess, like a onetime or just Q4 to Q1 adjustment. So the margins going forward are going to be a mix, obviously, of everything we have going on within Merchant Solutions. Again, we called out tax. Capital continues to grow well. Shopify FX continues to go really well. Those are all margin accretive. So I think we're in this period of time. You go back 2 years, there's a lot of good products we introduced. They're continuing to ramp. They're ramping really well. just given the size of the overall business, it just takes a while for them to have a meaningful impact to meaningful time to move the needle only just given the size of payments, given the size of everything else. So we feel really good about where we are in terms of delivering the gross profit dollars. The paid trial changed because the last thing I would say, the temporary these for this year, for sure, is going to be Subscription Solutions. Last couple of years, we've had a little bit of an uplift as it relates to the pricing change. The paid trial change is really going to be a headwind for Subscription Solutions growth this year. But going into next year, that will not be an issue. And again, while there's some MRR comparability issues, there's no net merchant ad issues at all. That's going really well.

[Carrie Gillard, executive]

Our next question will come from Tim Chiodo at UBS.

[Timothy Chiodo, analyst]

I want to touch a little bit on the Shopify point-of-sale in-store business. You mentioned some of the larger brands coming on to the platform. I was hoping we could tackle it from 2 angles. First is competitive differentiation whether it's inventory functionality or multi-location or maybe you could expand upon that, particularly as it's relative to [indiscernible], Square Lightspeed and maybe some of the other the legacy providers, the micros, et cetera? And then the second piece is around the distribution side. So [indiscernible] utilizes ISOs and bank partners and has direct sales. Square recent signed its first ISO in the U.S. and hiring salespeople. Maybe you could just compare and contrast the distribution efforts behind the point-of-sale offering for Shopify?

[Harley Finkelstein, executive]

Thanks for the question. It's a great question. So first of all, I think point-of-sale, think about this is this incredible multiyear growth initiative for us. I think the results for the quarter show that we're making really great traction. I mean, Q1 off-line JV was 23% in the quarter. And again, getting these bands like Just Cozy, FA or Shorts, Grand Saco, we're getting a lot of much larger multi-location ones I mentioned on the price side, working with these companies like Fallott right now that has 1,000 stores across campus every university campus in America. So I think you'll see -- a lot of momentum, especially with these large complex multi-location merchants, and part of the competitive advantage is just the fact that -- I mean, the feature said it's amazing. You've tapped to pay expansion, having the store capabilities. I mean the amount of features that we're rolling out for point of sale by itself just in the last 2 quarters is more than any of the other companies you mentioned roll out in multiple years. So just the velocity of product expansion is incredible. In terms of the [Audio Gap], there's a couple of things we are doing here. So obviously, we're looking at new geographies, new verticals, new segments, but it's not just necessarily us go to market on our own. We also have incredible SIs we're working with. And some -- I've mentioned this on previous calls, working with frankly, the largest SIs in the planet that are bringing us to market as well. And then I think probably the larger piece of why we're winning when it comes to point of sales and retail, is that I don't think the future retail is going to be online versus off-line, where these incredible businesses think about different segments, channel conflict. They want a single place where they can view the entirety of all their business. online and off-line and potentially through AI and on social media platforms. So this idea of Shopify being this unified commerce system that allows you to sell across every single channel and as more channels come to play, again, we talked about AI [indiscernible] on this call. That wasn't around 2 years now it is the fact that you can default have that with Shopify, we think, is an incredible opportunity. The other thing is, like Allo came to us a couple of weeks ago and said they actually want to offer same-day delivery on their checkout like their physical [indiscernible], and so we worked with Uber and DoorDash to get that going for them within a matter of weeks. That velocity, that confidence that these large and legacy brands are giving to us because they know that we can be a long-term partner is allowing us to win this market. So I know the companies you mentioned, but I think from a product perspective and from an integration perspective with unified commerce, we'll continue to win business.

[Operator]

Our last question will come from Dominic Ball at Redburn Atlantic.

[Dominic Ball, analyst]

Harley, maybe a question for yourself. You touched on it earlier. How does Shopify view the emergence of AI agents in terms of do you guys see this as an opportunity or more [Audio Gap] because on 1 hand, they could facilitate direct out with their own platforms. On the other hand, this may also unlock some of new sales channel for Shopify merchants, very similar to sort of what happened with social media commerce. And then 1 last, if purchases are done automatically through AI agents, this has reduce the value proposition of Shop Pay as well. So how are you guys thinking about this dynamic?

[Harley Finkelstein, executive]

We think it's a great opportunity. Look, the more channels that exist in the world, the more complexity it is for merchants and brands that's where the value of Shopify really shines. So if there's a new surface area whether it's through AI agents or through just simply LLMs and AI wrappers that consumer goes or look for a new pair of sneakers or a new cosmetic or a piece of furniture, they want to have access to the most interesting products for the most important brands, and they're all on Shopify. So for us, we think that all of these areas where commerce is happening is a great thing, it allows Shopify to increase its value. And we're working with pretty much every company that you have in mind to ensure that we are surfacing Shopify product, Shopify merchant products when people are searching for it. So we think it's a huge opportunity. One thing I will say also, just before we end, because I think it's important, and I know we're getting to closing time here. I hope on this call, presumably all of you picked up the tone -- Jeff, in my comments, we believe that Shopify is performing quarter after quarter, both in terms of top line momentum, but also managing expenses and delivering profitability. But 1 thing I do want to say, just given the nature of the questions on this call, that I want to reiterate, hopefully, most of you already know this, but we're about to cross the 10-year mark since our IPO. And 1 thing that I think you -- most of you have to understand about all of you is that Shopify was absolutely built for times like this, times where things seem uncertain or unclear. This is when we thrive, whether it was 2008, whether it was the pandemic or right now, Shopify was absolutely built with fragility. And I think these days for us are just like anything else. And our objective in these times is to shoulder complexity, so our merchants don't have to. It's how we build on much trust, and it's why I think our merchants are so damn resilient. But for us as a company, we operate very well in these environments, and we have the right levers to adjust on a dime. But we can also see huge opportunities if and when they arise and grow our business. So I think it's precisely in times like this, so we can demonstrate that those building on Shopify are simply better prepared than those [Audio Gap].

And with that, I just want to thank you all for joining the call. And for us, we'll get back to building the future of commerce. So thank you.

[Carrie Gillard, executive]

With that, this concludes our first quarter 2025 conference call. Thank you.