Shopify Inc. completes US$150M initial public offering

On May 27, 2015, Shopify Inc. completed its initial public offering of 8,855,000 Class A subordinate voting shares at an initial offering price of US$17.00 per share, which included the exercise in full by the underwriters of an over-allotment option to purchase up to 1,155,000 additional shares, for gross proceeds of US$150,535,000.  Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and RBC Capital Markets acted as joint bookrunning managers for the offering. Pacific Crest Securities, Raymond James & Associates and Canaccord Genuity acted as co-managers.

Shopify is a leading cloud-based commerce platform designed for small and medium-sized businesses that allows merchants to use the company’s software to design, set up and manage their stores across multiple sales channels, including web, mobile and brick-and-mortar locations.

Shopify was represented in-house by a legal team that included Joseph Frasca and Erin Zipes. Shopify was represented in Canada by Curtis Cusinato, Sean Vanderpol, Paul Rakowski, Jeremy Sculnick (securities), John Lorito, Katy Pitch and John O’Connor (tax) of Stikeman Elliott LLP and in the US by Margaret Brown, Gregg Noel, Riccardo Leofanti, Ryan Dzierniejko, Lyndsey Kiser (securities) and Cliff Gross and Matthew Donnelly (tax) of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP.

The underwriters were represented in Canada by Chris Hewat, Matthew Merkley and Adam Garetson (securities) and Bryan Bailey (tax) of Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP and in the US by Christopher Cummings, Ian Hazlett and Ronnie Ollo (securities) and David Mayo and Jason La (tax) of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP.

Shopify’s largest shareholder, Bessemer Venture Partners, was represented by Sven Milelli and Michael Nicholas of McCarthy Tétrault LLP.