(Reuters) -Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify Inc on Monday announced a 10-for-1 split of its class A and class B stock, joining a growing list of companies that have split their shares to make them more attractive for investors.
Shopify also said it would seek shareholder approval to authorize a new class of shares, called the Founder share, to Tobi Lutke, its chief executive officer and founder.
The proposal seeks to preserve the voting power of Lutke, as the Founder share will provide him with a variable number of votes and that combined with his previously owned shares from other classes would represent 40% of the total voting power attached to all of Shopify’s outstanding shares.
U.S.-listed shares of Shopify rose 2.9% to $620 in premarket trading as the company said it was looking to make its stock more “accessible” to investors.
Shopify, which was trading at around $1,600 in November, was at one point the most valuable Canadian company by market capitalization. However, the firm lost that title after its stock lost more than half its value this year.
Its move comes on the heels of e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc, Google-parent Alphabet Inc as well as video game retailer and “meme” stock GameStop Corp, which have announced share splits this year. Meanwhile, electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc had said it would seek shareholder approval for a stock split.
Shopify said on Monday each shareholder, as of June 22, would receive nine more shares on June 28 for each share held.
Currently, the company’s class A shares carry one vote per share and class B shares carry 10 votes per share.
(Reporting by Chavi Mehta in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni and Amy Caren Daniel)
