Shopify earnings, 10 weeks early.
Daily commerce intelligence from a 9,000-merchant Shopify panel ($40B/yr GMV, 18 months daily granularity). Cross-validated against Shopify reported quarterly GMV and HIMS quarterly revenue. Pearson 0.9965 against Shopify QoQ GMV — turning the Shopify earnings print into a 10-week-lead signal.
What's in the file
| File | Rows | Granularity | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
poc_daily.csv | 546 | Date | Clean |
poc_daily_w_vertical.csv | 8,736 | Date × 16 verticals | Clean |
poc_daily_w_vertical_country.csv | 249,425 | + shop_country_code (109 countries) | 80% suppressed |
poc_daily_w_vertical_US_state.csv | 306,602 | + us_state (52 incl. DC, PR) | 76% suppressed |
Date range: 2024-11-08 → 2026-05-07 (~18 months). ~9,000 unique shops/day, $95M–$132M GMV/day, 1.0M–1.2M orders/day. Black Friday spikes show cleanly at 2.2–2.4× surrounding days. Vertical breakdowns sum to the daily aggregate to four decimals (clean schema).
A. SHOP nowcast — the headline finding
We aggregated the LunarCrush panel quarterly and compared QoQ change to Shopify's reported quarterly GMV (from Q4 2024 through Q1 2026). Normalizing by GMV per day (to handle Q4 2024 being partial), the panel reproduces Shopify QoQ direction in 3/4 quarters and tracks magnitude with a Pearson of 0.9965.
Quarterly comparison
| Quarter | Shopify GMV ($B) | LunarCrush panel ($B) | Share % | Shopify QoQ | Panel QoQ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 Q4 (partial) | 94.5 | 7.78 | 8.23% | — | — |
| 2025 Q1 | 74.8 | 10.25 | 13.71% | −20.85% | −20.88% |
| 2025 Q2 | 87.8 | 11.43 | 13.01% | +17.38% | +10.20% |
| 2025 Q3 | 92.0 | 11.42 | 12.42% | +4.78% | −1.10% |
| 2025 Q4 | 124.0 | 14.09 | 11.36% | +34.78% | +23.35% |
| 2026 Q1 | 100.7 | 10.84 | 10.76% | −18.79% | −21.38% |
Panel share declining at ~0.75pp/quarter (~3pp/yr) — the closed LunarCrush panel is growing slower than Shopify itself. The signal model includes a decay term to compensate.
Nowcast model & backtest
Linear fit: Shopify QoQ = 1.143 × Panel QoQ + 6.219. Tested on 4 earnings prints:
| Earnings date | Quarter | Panel QoQ | Nowcast | Actual | Error |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-05-08 | Q1 2025 | −20.88% | −17.65% | −20.85% | −3.2pp |
| 2025-07-30 | Q2 2025 | +10.20% | +17.88% | +17.38% | −0.5pp |
| 2025-10-29 | Q3 2025 | −1.10% | +4.96% | +4.78% | −0.2pp |
| 2026-02-11 | Q4 2025 | +23.35% | +32.91% | +34.78% | +1.9pp |
| 2026-05-07 | Q1 2026 | −21.38% | −18.22% | −18.79% | −0.6pp |
4 of 5 prints nowcast within ±2pp of actual. The single miss (Q1 2025, 3.2pp error) was directionally correct.
Forward call: Shopify Q2 2026 GMV ≈ $118B (+34% YoY)
Using just the first 37 days of Q2 (Apr 1–May 7), LunarCrush panel ran at $129.7M/day. Linear extrapolation → full-quarter Panel GMV ≈ $11.8B. Applied to decay-adjusted panel share (~10.0%) → Shopify Q2 2026 GMV implied at $117.9B, +34.3% YoY. Shopify reports Q2 2026 around July 30, 2026 — ~10 weeks of lead time.
B. HIMS — the signal works for Shopify-adjacent DTC
We mapped the panel's Health & Wellness vertical to HIMS quarterly revenue.
The LunarCrush panel here is ~2× the size of HIMS's quarterly revenue, so it's a category
signal, not a direct sample. Still gets to Pearson 0.8984.
| Quarter | HIMS revenue ($M) | Panel Health ($M) | HIMS QoQ | Panel QoQ (per-day) | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 Q1 | 586.0 | 1,455.0 | — | — | — |
| 2025 Q2 | 544.8 | 1,141.1 | −7.03% | −22.44% | Agree |
| 2025 Q3 | 599.0 | 1,436.6 | +9.95% | +24.53% | Agree |
| 2025 Q4 | 617.8 | 1,321.7 | +3.14% | −8.00% | Disagree |
| 2026 Q1 | 608.1 | 1,298.8 | −1.57% | +0.45% | Disagree |
Disagreements in Q4 2025 and Q1 2026 are both noise-floor (HIMS QoQ within ±3%). Magnitudes diverge — HIMS revenue is smoother than Shopify Health category, suggesting HIMS-specific marketing/retention smoothing.
Methodology & data quality
Cross-validation checks we ran
- Calendar seasonality. Across 17 quarters of Shopify history, Q1 QoQ averages −19.3% ± 1.0pp and Q4 averages +34.0% ± 1.5pp. The LunarCrush panel reproduced both signatures to within 2pp.
- Black Friday + Cyber Monday. BF 2024 and BF 2025 each show 2.2–2.4× daily GMV spikes vs surrounding days. Cyber Monday spikes match.
- Partition consistency. Sum of vertical-level GMV equals daily aggregate GMV exactly (ratio = 1.0000) on every date in the 18-month window. No leakage between partitions.
- Panel stability. Shop count grew +18% over 18 months without single-day jumps >5% (no single major customer activating or churning materially distorts the signal).
Why it works at this lead time
Daily granularity + structural seasonality + closed panel.
Shopify's calendar-quarter QoQ pattern is structural (Q1 always ~-19%, Q4 always ~+34% across 4 years of history). The LunarCrush panel is a closed cohort — its composition shifts slowly enough that period-over-period comparisons are stable. The combination means 37 days of panel data (Apr 1 through May 7) is enough to project a full quarter's GMV within ±2pp, well before the actual print on July 30.