Publicly traded Canadian tech companies like Shopify and Lightspeed are seeing share prices plunge as the markets viscerally react to the United States’ (US) latest sweeping tariff measures that seem set to reorient the global economy.
Shopify shares were trading at just over $100 USD per share just prior to US President Donald Trump announcing the tariffs on Wednesday evening. As of Friday just after noon, that value has depreciated nearly 25 percent, trading at around $75 USD per share. Shopify just completed transitioning its public listing from the traditional New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to the tech-forward Nasdaq.
Both Shopify and Lightspeed saw their Canadian listings on the Toronto Stock Exchange take a slightly worse beating.
Payments processing and retail platform Lightspeed Commerce is also experiencing a drop on its NYSE listing, trading at around $9 USD per share prior to the announcement and since dropping approximately 15 percent to $7.68 USD per share. The company scaled back its revenue outlook last week, noting “several macroeconomic conditions have deteriorated” that are impacting consumer spending habits.
Both companies, which trade under the respective symbols SHOP and LSPD, saw their Canadian listings on Toronto Stock Exchange take a slightly worse beating, with their share prices dropping an approximate additional two percent compared to their American listed counterparts.
Other Canadian tech companies experiencing a steep post-tariff share price drop include OpenText by eight percent, Constellation Software by seven percent, and Kraken Robotics (on the TSX Venture) by nine percent.
BlackBerry’s stock price, down 21 percent on the week, was already falling the morning before Trump’s announcement as the company scaled back its revenue outlook due to uncertainty around reduced US government spending and tariffs. EdTech firm D2L has also seen a 19-percent share price drop, despite reporting strong fiscal year results on Wednesday.
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The White House’s tariff action has sent indices such as the S&P 500, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the Nasdaq Composite into freefall since Wednesday.
University of Calgary economics professor Trevor Tombe pointed out in a Bluesky post yesterday that, of the 11,406 market trading days since January 1980, only 29 saw larger declines. Ryan Cummings, chief of staff at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and a Biden-era White House economic advisor, noted that yesterday’s trading day was worse than 99.6 percent of all days since 1929.
Peter Berezin, an analyst at Canadian firm BCA Research, held one of the most pessimistic outlooks for the S&P 500 of any Wall Street analyst at the beginning of this year, and he’s sticking to it. Appearing on Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid this week, Berezin said he believes the S&P 500 will hit 4,450 points this year, an additional drop of approximately 14 percent, and that there is a high chance the US will enter a recession.
Disclosure: BetaKit majority owner Good Future is the family office of two former Shopify leaders, Arati Sharma and Satish Kanwar.
Feature image courtesy Maxim Hopman via Unsplash.