Lightspeed POS is now Lightspeed Commerce

Lightspeed's Acquisitions Surge Growth Prospects

After a pandemic that saw Lightspeed acquire two of its major competitors, Vend and ShopKeep respectively, it's changing its name to focus on the 'commerce' part of its business. Lightspeed is a Quebec success, one of the first firms in recent memory to truly go global in its point of sale business.

Lightspeed considers itself a one-stop commerce platform for merchants around the world to simplify, scale and create exceptional customer experiences. With over $500 million in funding and a successful IPO Lightspeed Commerce has really accelerated its outlook, and comes into direction competition (in an ideal world) with Shopify and Square.

Retail is Not Dead

It's revenue grew 220% to ?$115.9 million for the three months ending June 30th, 2021. New parts of its business seem to be accelerated even faster with transaction-based revenue of?$56.5 million, an increase of 453%.

Lightspeed is a sales machine under president Jean Paul Chauvet and the charismatic Dax Dasilva appears to enjoy public relations to the utmost with more appearances now on CNBC. That means Lightspeed Commerce has now graduated to the big leagues. Lightspeed profited from the retail lockdowns with six acquisitions since 2020. This has meant more offices all over the world.

The Pivot to Lightspeed Commerce

With revenues soaring Lightspeed Commerce does sound a lot better than Lightspeed POS, with many people outside of retail not even knowing what POS stands for. This is now a company for shareholders and not just elevating what small businesses and indie stores and restaurants can do.

Lightspeed's successful IPO led to its ability to acquire companies worth in the area of 350 to 500 million to augment its platform. From humble point of sale software to payments and E-commerce ubiquity Lightspeed Commerce has room to run.

Lightspeed's location in Quebec with significant early funding from Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec means competitors like Vend and ShopKeep never really stood a chance. ?CDPQ was founded in 1965 by an act of the National Assembly, where Quebec considers itself a quasi-nation and props up companies that are solid job creators. That Lightspeed Commerce could have been born from such an origin is rather interesting, and a treasure chest for Inovia, another early investor.

BNN (the Bloomberg of Canada) mysteriously calls Lightspeed an E-commerce company now with even the Globe and Mail comparing Lightspeed to rival Shopify. The fact is Square and Shopify are much more mature companies than fledgling Lightspeed Commerce. Square acquisitions dwarf Lightspeed's acquisitions of late and Shopify's revenue surge is on a whole other scale.

Lightspeed Reaches Global Scale in 2021 with 150k Global Merchants

Despite the resurgence in activity, Lightspeed said Thursday it lost US$49.3 million in the quarter. That's more than double. It's expensive to grow fast, even Uber lost $500 million recently with the always present promises of profitability.

With 150,000 merchants Lightspeed Commerce is achieving global scale however. If it can take a stake in Shopify's turf Canada will have its own BigTech duopoly of retail and E-commerce both empowering small businesses and independent retailers. If Shopify is the Amazon of the North, is Lightspeed the Square of the North? If only that were true. Maybe one day it will be!

Let's not Compare Lightspeed to Square or Shopify ?!

Jack Dorsey is a strategic with the BNPL acquisition in Australia, what is Lightspeed's leadership direction? As for Shopify, its market cap is roughly 20x that of Lightspeed. Comparing Lightspeed Commerce to either Square or Shopify is rather wishful thinking and somewhat deceptive PR.

The problem is LightSpeed Commerce doesn't appear to be an in-house innovator or really skilled yet in FinTech. Its subscription model is a cash cow with a consistent trajectory and its point-of-sale software now truly has global dominance. For us to compare it to Square or Shopify in all seriousness, what would it be required to do? It needs to be able to hire the best, to retain talent and to innovate in-house and not simply expand its business model into smaller countries where it can buy its growth.

With the acquisitions of Ecwid?and NuORDER LightSpeed Commerce wishes to become a digital platform that can offer SMEs and SMBs more features across the retail spectrum. The push into E-commerce makes sense, since brick-and-mortar retail and restaurants need to be able to compete with coming Cloud Kitchens and E-commerce native stores. Lightspeed Commerce has a solid sales defined leadership, which means they can upsell customers more features rather easily.

Where Square is now a FinTech platform with a surprising Bitcoin familiarity and Shopify will become a logistics leader, Lightspeed has pivoted into E-commerce, something technically it should have done five years ago. But timing is everything and the pandemic has been a boon for this company. Lightspeed Commerce only launched a payment product in 2019 but the acceleration is impressive.

Lightspeed Commerce is a 16 year old company trying to grow up in an era of duopolistic platforms. It's in a market position similar to that of Salesforce, somewhat cornered by the duopolies. So what does Lightspeed do well besides point of sale software?

Lightspeed Commerce's deep understanding of retail verticals though is impressive. Dasilva plans to focus Lightspeed's growth on 12 verticals including hospitality, retail, apparel, golf, bikes, jewelry, home and garden. Lightspeed knows what it does well and knows what its customers need and want.

Lightspeed shareholders voted Thursday to change the company's name to better reflect all the services it provides. Lightspeed Commerce's growing identity means its global impact can be significant to enable small businesses to cope better with lockdowns and pandemic uncertainty and thrive in any condition, even a new normal that could upend small independent retail stores.

Lightspeed is going big for Montreal and Quebec, even as Toronto startups are flourishing and British Columbia IPOs (Vancouver) show significantly more innovation per capita as compared to French preferred Montreal. Lightspeed may be the Prime Minister of Quebec's hope for glory. They raised their revenue forecast for the fiscal year Thursday, but it also boosted its loss expectation, again tied to acquisition expenses.?