Retail investors should consider buying shares of companies that have recently attracted investments from asset managers and hedge funds. And right now, the numbers tied to Shopify (TSX: SHOP) show that some of the world’s largest institutional investors are bullish on the tech stock.
According to Tikr.com, new ownership data shows a wave of buying activity around the Ottawa-based commerce giant, even as the company posts some of its strongest results in years.
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Who is buying Shopify stock?
Capital International Investors recently boosted its position by more than 30%, adding over 11.7 million Shopify shares to bring its stake to a value above $6 billion. That makes it Shopify’s largest disclosed institutional holder.
Capital Research Global Investors made an even bigger move, growing its position by over 500%. National Bank of Canada, one of the country’s own financial institutions, increased its stake by 36%. T. Rowe Price and Norges Bank Investment Management also added shares.
However, Capital World Investors trimmed its position by nearly 30%, and Baillie Gifford, Jennison Associates, and Morgan Stanley Investment Management each pulled back as well. Even strong companies see some funds rotate out to lock in gains or rebalance portfolios.
So, why is smart money following Shopify stock in July 2026? Valued at a market cap of $225 billion, Shopify continues to grow at an enviable pace.
In Q1 2026, Shopify reported a gross merchandise volume of US$101 billion, an increase of 35% year over year. It was the second straight quarter of GMV above US$100 billion. Comparatively, revenue rose by 34% to US$3.2 billion, while free cash flow stood at US$476 million, indicating a margin of 15%.
President Harley Finkelstein told investors on the call that Shopify has now delivered four straight quarters of 30% or higher revenue and GMV growth, alongside mid- to high-teens free cash flow margins, a combination he said very few public companies can match at that scale.
Shopify says AI-driven traffic to its merchant stores grew 8 times year over year in the first quarter, while orders from AI-powered searches jumped nearly 13 times. The company has positioned itself as the only platform that enables product discovery and checkout across ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google, all tied to a single central system.
Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference earlier this year, Finkelstein explained why he believes this matters so much.
He described three moats that will determine who wins the next era of commerce: control of the transaction layer, a deep proprietary dataset built over two decades, and network effects that grow stronger as more merchants and buyers join the platform.
Shopify, he argued, already leads in all three.
- Payments remain a core growth engine.
- Shopify Payments processed US$67 billion in GMV during the quarter, up 41% and now covering 67% of total volume.
- Shop Pay, the company’s one-click checkout tool, processed US$35 billion in sales, up 59% year over year, with growth outside the United States topping 70%.
- On the enterprise side, the number of merchants generating more than US$100 million in annual GMV on Shopify has nearly doubled over the past two years.
Is SHOP stock still undervalued?
Down 31% from all-time highs, Shopify is projected to expand free cash flow from US$2 billion in 2025 to US$7 billion in 2030. If the Canadian tech stock is priced at 35 times forward FCF, below the current multiple of 58 times, it could return 54% within the next four years.
Shopify is building the infrastructure that connects merchants to buyers across online stores, physical locations, social platforms, and now AI assistants. It benefits from a wide and growing moat, and the world’s largest money managers appear to agree.
Shopify stock is hard to ignore given an accelerating revenue base, expanding margins, and a business model built around 20 years of commerce data.
