Asmus Puhl Finance Blog

Shopify’s Q2 2020 results were just incredible: second-quarter revenue grew 97% on gross merchandise volume growth of 119% year on year!

Shopify’s $714.3 million in quarterly revenue was more than $200 million ahead of what analysts forecasted.

New stores created on the Shopify platform grew 71% in Q2 2020 compared with Q1 2020, driven by the shift of commerce to online as well as by the extension of the free trial period on standard plans from 14 days to 90 days.

Adjusted operating income for the second quarter of 2020 was $113.7 million, or 16% of revenue, compared with adjusted operating income of $6.4 million or 2% of revenue in the second quarter of 2019.

Shopify is clearly working with a huge tailwind caused by the pandemic and the rapid shift to online-commerce.

2 days ago Shopify filed for a $7.5B mixed shelf offering to give it the right to sell several different types of securities. The size of this offering added phantasy to the stock and fueled speculation about a big acquisition.

As the tailwind of rapid digitalization of organisations continues Shopify is certainly a „buy“ even at today’s prices.

Shopify is not immune to economic uncertainty if buyers spend less but in these days merchants of all kind need to develop an online-strategy and Shopify is by far the no.1 company to help them.

Markel Corp. Q2 2020

Markel Corp. (NYSE:MKL) the speciality insurer released Q2 2020 results.
It comes as little surprise that the results were severely impacted by the pandemic.

The positive news are that gross written premiums were 3.7 billion for the first half of 2020, compared to 3.3 billion in 2019, an increase of 12%.

The underwriting results for the six months ended June 30, 2020 included $325 million of underwriting loss attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, which added 12 points to the consolidated combined ratio which jumped to 103%.

But as we know the “Markel style“ the ample reserves should now be sufficient to cover all future losses caused by the pandemic.

Luckily the investment results benefitted from a meaningful recovery in public equities in the second quarter.

Markel’s share price recovered these days after after a decline in the first half of 2020 and ended yesterday at $ 1’045,37
For long term investors Markel is a buy!