Background: Canva is the Aussie-grown business that started as a school yearbook tool back in 2013, but evolved into a design platform so easy that junior accountants turned into senior designers. Fast forward to today, it's now used by over 265 million monthly users - including nearly all Fortune 500 companies.

What happened: Now, Canva's Australian financials for FY24 have just been dropped... and yes, it was a very late lodgement. Revenue hit roughly $2 billion USD, up about $660 million year-on-year. But expenses also climbed sharply to around $2.3 billion USD, leading to a net loss of about $242 million USD.  

What else: Despite posting a net loss, Canva's operating cash flow nearly doubled to around $263 million USD. So how do they have a cash flow profit but an overall loss? Well, Canva issued over $350 million USD comes in share-based compensation to employees.

What's the key learning?

💡 When you hear that a company is "profitable," it usually refers to "accounting profit." That's revenue minus expenses, based on strict accounting rules. Those accounting rules include non-cash items like depreciation or share-based compensation

💡 Cash dlow, on the other hand, tracks actual money moving in and out. In Canva's case, over $350 million USD in stock-based compensation reduced profit - but no cash actually left the business.

💡 This is common in high-growth tech companies. They use equity to attract talent while preserving cash. For example, Atlassian reported $1.36 billion USD in stock-based compensation in 2025 (around 26% of revenue).