No surprise in its excellent nine-month results published earlier this week: sales are up 25% on the same time last year, the number of merchants using the platform is up 27%, and operating profit is up 132%. The latter is important - for a reason explained later in this article - and shows that management intends to send a strong signal to investors.

Intrinsically, Shopify is a perfect SaaS business model: ultra-lucrative and resilient, with a captive customer base, a plethora of new, high-margin features gradually being added to its platform, and ever-gigantic potential for expansion as e-commerce penetration progresses.

The quality of its service is also universally acclaimed. This is evidenced by its steadily growing market share against competitors such as WooCommerce, Wix and Squarespace; its annual growth rate of almost 60% over the last decade; and its recent successes in winning over major accounts - Sephora, Lindt, Nestlé, Red Bull or Tesla, among others - which extends its reach beyond the original market segment of small independent merchants.

However, an investment in Shopify is above all a profession in itself, because things get tricky as soon as you get into the details and readability of the accounts. On the one hand, the accounting result is regularly impacted by a host of exceptional items. On the other, operating expenses remain at abnormally high levels, as Shopify continues to invest aggressively in the development of its "ecosystem" of services.

The group could choose to put the brakes on these investments, and thus boost margins almost immediately. As mentioned above, this is in all likelihood what it did in part this quarter - in order to highlight the intrinsic quality of its business model to analysts, or anyone else who doubted it.

Without dwelling on these details, or on the temptation to tweak overly complex financial models, the most we can do is note that Shopify is currently valued at at x93 its expected operating profit before investments - or EBITDA - this year, and thus conclude that investors' growth expectations here remain highly ambitious.

To sustain such high valuations, the platform must maintain its current pace of expansion. This will involve winning new customers and additional market share, as the fees charged for its various services - the so-called "take rate" - is already high. is already high; it could still gain a few margin points in this area, but at the risk of facing a rebellion - or even an exodus - of users.

Like all North American companies in the technology sector, Shopify has a rather generous stock option and bonus share policy. We note, however, that this policy is less exuberant than average, and that the group does not buy back shares to offset the impact of dilution caused by the issue of new shares. It doesn't say it enough, but this all-too-common practice, which MarketScreener has protested against on several occasions in the past, amounts to a double whammy for investors.