Shares of Shopify Inc. dropped as investor concerns about long-term growth outweighed the Canadian e-commerce platform’s outlook for the current quarter.

Shopify said Wednesday that revenue in the current quarter will grow by 20 per cent or more. Even so, analysts at Morgan Stanley wrote in a note that investors “still lack any road map” on future growth after the earnings call. US-listed shares of the Canadian e-commerce company slumped as much as 6.6 per cent to US$58.33, erasing more than US$3 billion in market value.

Shopify president Harley Finkelstein defended the company’s strategy Thursday in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “We are architecting a new shape of Shopify” with a “focus on our main quest which is commerce software and retail software,” he said, responding to a question on the Morgan Stanley note. “We are also earning more parts of the merchant business.” 

The company is expanding its shipping business and global merchant base. The cost-to-value ratio has led the company to see more merchants migrate to Shopify, according to Finkelstein. In May this year, Shopify announced plans to cut 20 per cent of its staff and sell its logistics business to Flexport, a San Francisco-based supply chain management company.

Finklestein said he was optimistic about Shopify’s prospects even in a recessionary environment, saying businesses will still need to modernize and improve their efficiency using Shopify’s tools. 

“For US$39 a month, you can build a multimillion-dollar or multibillion-dollar company,” Finkelstein said. On Wednesday, Shopify said its second-quarter revenue was US$1.69 billion, exceeding analysts’ expectations. 

The shares fell 4.8 per cent to US$59.44 at 2:46 p.m. in New York and had gained 80 per cent through Wednesday’s close.