After a brutal 2020, which brought the first-ever revenue drop, 2023 was a good year for the e-commerce industry.
The market revenue jumped by almost 10% year-over-year and hit $3,15-trillion, up from $2,87-trillion a year before, while more than 300-million new users flocked to shopping apps and platforms.
Market projections for 2024 are even more optimistic, with another 300-million new users and revenue expected to grow by 15% to $3,65-trillion.
This new momentum in the e-commerce industry has helped the largest players in the market add billions of dollars to their stock values. Still, none competes with Shopify, the biggest gainer of them all.
According to data presented by AltIndex.com, Shopify`s market cap surged by a massive 120% year-over-year, the biggest increase among the top five e-commerce giants.
After delivering 661% positive returns in 2019 and 2020 combined, Shopify (SHOP) stocks saw high volatility in 2021 as the global demand for the e-commerce platform started falling. A year later, US and Canadian banks started rapidly raising interest rates to fight inflationary pressures, triggering a massive selloff in high-growth tech stocks, led by Shopify. As a result, the e-commerce platform ended 2022 by losing 73% of its value.
However, the company`s ability to maintain strong growth even in a challenging economic environment impressed investors and triggered a surge in its share price in 2023. In January last year, the price of a single SHOP share stood at around $38, and now it`s more than $80, which is still 52% below its all-time high of $169 from November 2021.
The impressive price surge has helped Shopify to grow its stock value by $56-billion or almost 120% year-over-year, the biggest increase among the top five e-commerce giants. The world`s largest e-commerce company, Amazon, saw an 83% year-over-year growth, with its market cap rising from $878-billion last January to over $1,6-trillion last week.
Statistics show Mercado Libre saw the second-largest market cap growth. Last week, the combined value of shares of the Argentinian e-commerce giant stood at $87,2-billion, or 98% more than in the same month a year ago. The second-largest player in the market behind Amazon, Chinese online retailer Pinduoduo, follows with a 57% year-over-year increase and a stock value of more than $190-billion as of last week.
Unlike Shopify, Amazon, Pinduoduo, and Mercado Libre, which all saw double and triple-digit growth in 2023, Alibaba (BABA) ended the year with a huge market cap drop, and the negative trend continued this year.
The e-commerce giant faced several setbacks in 2023, including a prolonged recovery of the Chinese economy, loss of market share to Pinduoduo parent PDD Holdings, and an abandoned plan to spin off its cloud computing unit due to new US chip export restrictions. As a result, Alibaba`s share price plummeted, wiping $112-billion off its market cap.
Statistics show the combined value of Alibaba shares stood at $285-billion in January 2023. Since then, this figure has plunged by 40%, falling to around $173-billion last week.