Business Unusual: What Stood Out for Parkway Life REIT, Arista Networks and Shopify

The shifting macro crosscurrents, mid-term election cycles, and perpetual anxieties over AI spending bubbles make it easy to get swept up in daily market sentiment. But step away from the flashing tickers, and you find a completely different reality underneath.

Zooming in on the underlying operations, it is business as usual for Parkway Life REIT (SGX: C2PU), Arista Networks (ANET), and Shopify (SHOP).

They continue to execute steadily and deliver strong performance.

Instead of repeating the usual thesis, I would highlight what what was unusual and stood out for me amid the routine execution.

Parkway Life REIT: Year-End Additional Distribution

For the first 9 months of the year, PLife posted a 1.9% YOY dip in revenue and a 2.4% YOY drop in net property income, weighed down by Japanese yen forex depreciation and lower rental income following a tenant exit affecting five Japan nursing home properties.

Yet, the core metric that matters most to unit holders—the Distribution Per Unit (DPU)—climbed significantly by 13.4% YOY, reaching 13.10 cents for the 9-month period.

The discrepancy between the two comes down to how PLife smoothens the recognition of step-up revenue from Project Renaissance (its Singapore hospital master lease restructuring) alongside its income hedges.

Despite the headline jump in DPU, what caught my attention was a subtle slowdown: this increase is actually less than the 14.6% YOY growth achieved in 1H 2026.

In fact, breaking out the numbers, the DPU for this third quarter alone grew by roughly 10.7% only to 4.33 cents.

Management doesn’t explicitly spell out the exact cause for this quarterly slip in the report, but in my view, it likely comes down to how much cash they chose to retain for future capital expenditure. Regardless, the enduring structural anchor remains intact.

The real highlight this year is the additional year-end distribution that arises from the outperformance under the revenue-sharing formula for Gleneagles Hospital and Parkway East Hospital, amounting to S$1.7 million in first half alone.

If the current trajectory holds through the final quarter, you are looking at a total DPU of roughly 18 cents for the full year. At a share price hovering around S$4.00, that translates to a very respectable ~4.5% yield for a rock-solid, defensive income distributor.

Arista Networks: Outlandish Quarterly Growth

Arista delivered an absolute powerhouse of a quarter.

Revenue skyrocketed to $3.66 billion, representing a staggering 58.5% YOY growth. Consequently, Non-GAAP earnings per share (EPS) also smashed expectations, coming in at $1.20—a 56% surge!

This phenomenal growth is well beyond Arista’s typical historical rate. In fact, its 59% YOY revenue surge is Arista’s highest rate since its IPO days (in 2014), when quarterly revenue was more than 30 times smaller.

In a market where tech investors are constantly sweating over whether AI infrastructure build-outs are peaking or hitting digestion phases, Arista completely decoupled from those worries.

While such hyper-growth is unlikely to sustain, management’s FY2027 revenue guidance of 38% to 40%, coupled with the capital expenditure plans announced by major hyperscalers, shows that we are nowhere near the end of the runway yet.

Shopify: Top Line Growth and Improved Margin

IIt’s scary that Shopify just keeps its multi-quarter streak of high-octane performance alive in 3Q2026. You simply get used to it and take it for granted!

Total revenue grew 32% YOY to hit $3.7 billion, while Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) climbed 29.5% to hit $119 billion.

While some fret over the slight miss in GMV, it’s ridiculous to me to focus on that when the actual performance is exceptional.

Imagine this scenario: A student consistently gets 95% for his tests and scored 94% for the latest test. Instead of being impressed by the 94%, you focus on the fact that it’s one percent lower than the past.

Here’s the real headline-grabber: Shopify posted a 22% free cash flow (FCF) margin, driven by structural operating leverage and disciplined expense management.

For years, skeptics argued that Shopify’s growth required sacrificing financial hygiene. Over recent years, Shopify has improved that baseline to ~17%.

However, a 22% FCF margin at a $3.7 billion quarterly revenue scale completely shatters the “growth-at-all-costs” narrative, proving it can scale top-line market share if it wants to.

Management guided FCF margin to normalise to about 19% next quarter due to seasonal spikes in marketing and working capital, which is completely normal during the year-end holidays.

But the real takeaway is this: Shopify’s profitability is a matter of executive choice, not operational constraint.

The ability to dial profitability up or down at will proves they aren’t forced into a corner by burn rates; rather, they have total optionality.

That speaks highly of Shopify’s moat as the undisputed e-commerce leader.

Business As Usual: Staying Unusual

Beneath these standout quarterly highlights lies the secret ingredient that makes holding these businesses feel like “business as usual”—they are anything but ordinary.

• Parkway Life REIT is an unusual S-REIT that has managed to increase its DPU every single year since its IPO.
• Arista Networks is an unusual network titan that continues to disrupt the industry and innovate relentlessly.
• Shopify is an unusual e-commerce leader that keeps pushing the frontier with complete commerce agnosticism.

For now, I’m more than happy to stick with the unusual.

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