company is changing the shape of shopify significantly today with plans to reduce size of the company by 20 shares of shopify inc were rocketing 27 in thursday trading and on track for their best day on record after the ecommerce company announced the planned sale of its logistics business shopify shoptdove deeper into logistics during the pandemic in what baird analyst colin sebastian described as a contentious endeavor both internally and as a thorn in the side of investors shopifys decision to backtrack on the initiative by selling its this business to flexport in exchange for a greater equity stake in that company is a signal that shopify no longer deems it worthwhile to go up against behemoth amazoncom inc amzn in seller logistics we are changing the shape of shopify significantly today to pay unshared attention to our mission chief executive tobias lütke said in a letter to staff that was also shared as a blog post there are a number of consequences to this and i dont want to bury the lede after today shopify will be smaller by about 20 and flexport will buy shopify logistics this means some of you will leave shopify today a spokesperson said that the 20 figure encompasses shopify logistics and other parts of the business through the terms of the sale shopify will receive stock representing a 13 equity interest in flexport on top of its existing equity interest in the company we applaud management for making difficult decisions that set the company up better for longterm success although this is significant pivot baird sebastian wrote in a note to clients lütke called logistics clearly a worthwhile side quest for us though he added that contributing our work to flexport under the leadership of harish abbott allows everything about shopify logistics to be more ambitious and global in nature the announcement came alongside shopifys firstquarter report which saw the company post comprehensive income of 77 million or 5 cents a share it posted a comprehensive loss of 15 billion or 117 a share in the yearearlier quarter shopify logged adjusted earnings per share of 1 cent down from 2 cents a year before while analysts tracked by factset were modeling a 4cent loss on the metric revenue rose to 151 billion from 12 billion while analysts had been looking for 144 billion gross merchandise volume increased to 496 billion up 15 from a year before lütke also discussed the companys evolving thinking about managers in his blog post the balance of crafter to manager numbers is a tricky one to strike he commented too few and you risk misalignment on the most important things too many and you add heavy layers of process approvals meetings and  side quests our numbers were unhealthy just like it is in much of the tech industry he added a more fitforpurpose shopify centered on its main quest has less scope creep fewer meetings and more shipping great features for our merchants this content was created by marketwatch which is operated by dow jones  co marketwatch is published independently from dow jones newswires and the wall street journal