Lightspeed looks beyond point-of-sale for future growth

Shares hit record high as revenue tops predictions

Lightspeed, just over two years after going public, doesn’t want to be just a point-of-sale company.

On Thursday, the Montreal-based company’s shareholders voted to approve a name change from Lightspeed POS to Lightspeed Commerce, reflecting its growing suite of products beyond its payment terminals for brick-and-mortar retailers.

“Point-of-sale is one part of what we do for our customers,” CEO Dax Dasilva told The Logic. “We are a one-stop commerce platform.”

The vote comes as Lightspeed’s reported results for its first quarter that surpassed analysts’ expectations, benefiting from the reopening of many economies around the world and growth in its payments business. Shares hit a record high on Thursday, rising more than eight per cent to $121 on the Toronto Stock Exchange. They ended the day at $119.89.

Here are some highlights from the earnings report:

❚ Total revenue in the quarter was US$115.9 million, a 220 per cent increase year over year, driven by a combination of organic growth and acquisitions of Nuorder and Ecwid, the latter of which is seen as a potential competitor to Shopify. The revenue beat analysts’ consensus estimate of US$92.8 million.

❚ Net loss widened to US$49.3 million, from US$20.1 million. On an adjusted basis, Lightspeed lost US$6.9 million, or six per cent of revenue, compared with 7.5 per cent the previous year.

❚ Transaction-based revenue, which includes revenue from payments, was US$56.5 million, up 453 per cent.

On a call with analysts Thursday morning, Lightspeed’s management team highlighted its success in payments and lending over the last quarter. About 10 per cent of the total volume Lightspeed processed went through payments, a rapidly growing business segment for the company.

It eventually wants to have half of its customer base using its payments product, giving it more transaction-based revenue on top of the subscription fees that customers pay to use its products. This week, Lightspeed announced it’s launching payments in five additional markets in Europe—germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands — after launching in the U.K. in April. The company expects to become more profitable in proportion with the number of customers using payments.

Lightspeed said its lending business, Lightspeed Capital, is beginning to gain traction. The company made almost 430 loans to its customers in the quarter, with revenue from Lightspeed Capital up 68 per cent from the previous quarter, the company said.

“Lightspeed Capital had its best quarter so far, and we are starting to see numbers that are becoming meaningful,” Dasilva said on the earnings call. “We believe capital can become a very meaningful driver of growth, and especially profitability, in the long term.”