The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated a shift toward ecommerce for consumers and merchants alike. Regarding big cap tech stocks, few benefitted as much as Shopify Inc. (SHOP), which saw massive gross merchandise volume (GMV) year-over-year growth from the end of 2019 to 2020, amounting to 119%. While the surge toward online buying and selling of goods has pulled back just a smidge as economies begin to reopen, many analysts believe the general trend is here to stay. (See Shopify stock charts on TipRanks)

Opining on the subject is Samad Samana of the Jefferies Group, who wrote that the deceleration in aggressive adoption of ecommerce tools was expected, and that the released Q2 results still beat Wall Street expectations “nicely.”

Samana maintained a Buy rating on the stock, and provided a price target of $1,800. This target is raised from his previous at $1,675, and now represents a potential 12-month upside of 20.01%.

The five-star analyst explained that the stock has recently been experiencing a rally, so a slight pullback could always be in the cards. Despite this, he sees strong long-term upside with growth continuing to climb.

Fueled by strategic investments in new initiatives, Shopify saw GMV increase 40% year-over-year. This expansion came even after 2020’s explosive growth, thus Samana was thoroughly enthused.

While he retains caution that GMV may slow down a tad throughout Q3, the analyst added that international growth has been scaling up faster than North American growth.

Furthermore, the addition of the Shop Pay payment platform to merchants on Google (GOOGL) and Facebook (FB) has been quite successful, and during Q2 processed 25% more in cumulative gross payments volume quarter-over-quarter. Samana asserts that Shop Pay will provide ample room for monetization moving forward, as the company moves to be “an increasingly important merchant-buyer touch point.”

On TipRanks, SHOP has an analyst rating consensus of Moderate Buy, based on 16 Buy and 10 Hold ratings. The average Shopify price target is $1,734.74, suggesting a possible 12-month upside of 15.66%. SHOP closed trading Friday at a price of $1,499.93.