The Toronto Stock Exchange isn’t exactly teeming with pandemic powerhouses.
There’s Shopify Inc., of course, which rode a surge in online shopping this year to become the world’s second-largest e-commerce platform, behind only Amazon.com Inc.
A handful of other large Canadian listings were well positioned for the profound economic and social changes foisted on the world by the novel coronavirus. Cargojet Inc., for example, pounced on the boom in global air cargo. Up-and-coming software companies Kinaxis Inc. and Lightspeed POS Inc. captured the market’s attention by helping businesses adapt to their new reality.
The rest of the Canadian stock leaderboard in 2020 has been dominated by precious metals miners, forestry companies and renewable energy.
But there is life beyond the confines of the S&P/TSX Composite Index. Here are a few pandemic-era success stories plucked from the vast ranks of Canada’s small-cap stock universe.
DOCEBO INC.
Year-to-date share price growth: 353 per cent
Like everything else, Docebo’s stock sold off in March when the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic dawned on the world. But the trough was shallow and brief, as investors quickly realized that the company was uniquely positioned for the mass shift of workers to home offices.
Docebo provides cloud-based employee learning software, which became a hot commodity as companies adapted to work-from-home and decentralized training. Back in May, founder and chief executive officer Claudio Erba spoke of a “crazy increase in adoption” by Docebo’s customers.
The pace of growth didn’t really slow as the pandemic wore on. In the third quarter, the company reported a 52-per-cent increase in revenue, year over year. Docebo even turned a profit, on an adjusted EBITDA basis, one year ahead of schedule, although the priority remains growth over profitability, Mr. Erba said on an earnings call last month. “We believe we are still only scratching the surface on the market potential for digital learning.”