Lightspeed Commerce has laid off staff and closed vacant roles at the company, impacting a total of 250 roles.
The news: Last week, multiple former Lightspeed employees across content and sales roles announced on LinkedIn that they had been laid off. When reached for comment by BetaKit, the Montréal-based e-commerce and point-of-sale company confirmed the “organizational changes” and said that 250 roles across the company were impacted, including “vacant roles that are being closed.” The company did not break down how many of those jobs were cut compared to how many roles were no longer open.
From the source: “These decisions support Lightspeed’s long-term objective of growing responsibly and profitably so we can continue to invest in our business, our products, and the customers we serve,” a Lightspeed spokesperson wrote to BetaKit in an email on Friday.
The context: Founded in 2005, Lightspeed sells point-of-sale and commerce software and hardware to restaurants, retailers, and hospitality providers. Since last year, the company has been executing a transformation plan to focus on two key markets: North American retail and European hospitality.
The company has tried to balance growth and profitability in part to raise its share price, which never regained its 2021 zero-interest-rate period high. It dropped from a peak of $159 CAD on the Toronto Stock Exchange in September 2021 to a third of its value in three months, and now hovers around $15 CAD.
Final thought: Lightspeed also made roughly 100 job cuts earlier this year, across a team of about 2,000 people, to find further efficiencies in the business, CEO Dax Dasilva told BetaKit in July. In March, the company divested a US hospitality business unit and has told The Globe and Mail that it’s open to more divestitures. A Lightspeed spokesperson said the company would share more details about its organizational changes on Nov. 5 when it reports its fiscal second-quarter earnings.