Christmas is just around the corner, and you know what that means: shopping season is here!
Christmas tends to coincide with a big increase in shopping, as people scramble to get gifts for their nearest and dearest. As a result, retailers and e-commerce companies tend to post their best sales numbers around this time of year. Any company that sells goods to consumers has a good shot at making big sales over the Christmas holidays. In this article, I will explore three TSX stocks that fit that description.
Lightspeed
Lightspeed Commerce (TSX:LSPD)(NYSE:LSPD) is a Canadian POS/e-commerce company that is heavily involved in payments. It has two main business activities: point-of-sale systems, which process payments at retail stores, and e-commerce platforms, which take sales for online stores. Lightspeed’s POS is a software product that functions like a cash register; its e-commerce solution (Ecwid) is like Shopify (TSX:SHOP)(NYSE:SHOP).
Lightspeed’s most recent quarter was a miss. Its revenue grew 193%, which sounds like a lot but was less than analysts expected. Earnings missed by a wide margin. Most of Lightspeed’s growth is coming from acquisitions rather than organic growth. Some people are concerned about that, but given the nature of its business activities, LSPD has a lot of potential to rake in big-time sales from Christmas shopping. In the fourth quarter of last year, Lightspeed grew its revenue by 127%, thanks in no small part to the holiday season. This year, it may repeat the same feat again.
Shopify
Shopify is an e-commerce stock that is already making a lot of money from Christmas holidays. As usual, Shopify live-blogged its Black Friday sales numbers, eventually racking up $2.9 billion in merchant sales. At the peak (12 pm Eastern Time), vendors were doing $3.1 million in sales per minute. That’s a truly incredible volume of sales and will contribute greatly to SHOP’s GMV for the current quarter. And it’s not over yet.
In addition to Black Friday, the Christmas shopping season also consists of several weeks of regular shopping — including the dreaded (but for retailers, lucrative) “last-minute shopping.” So, there is serious potential for Shopify to clean up this holiday season.
Apple
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is one stock that has some potential to make a lot of money this holiday season. The company has seen massive success with its line of M1 chips and AirPods. It has gotten to the point where AirPods alone would be a bigger company than dozens of well-known brands. Many of Apple’s products — iPads, AirPods, Watches — are eminently giftable and will probably be given as gifts this holiday season.
The current lineup of Apple products is widely considered to be the best in years. Equipped with the legendary M1 chip, the current MacBook Air is on my personal Christmas wish list, and I know that it will be on many other peoples’ as well. So, Apple is one company poised to make a lot of money off Christmas shopping.
