Montréal-based Lightspeed Commerce has cut 10 percent of its staff and initiated a stock buyback as the company attempts to reclaim shareholder favour.
The cost-reducing initiatives are Lightspeed founder and CEO Dax Dasilva’s first moves since returning to the CEO job, replacing his former successor and longtime executive, Jean Paul Chauvet, following a negative response to the company’s Q3 2024 earnings call in February.
Lightspeed said the reorganization affects approximately 280 roles, adding that the company has taken on several other unspecified cost reduction initiatives in its facilities and operations.
“After successfully integrating our many acquisitions into our two flagship products and expanding adoption of our payments offering, Lightspeed is now entering a new phase, one focused on profitable growth to capture the opportunity in front of us,” Dasilva said in a statement. “This means making some hard decisions, like reducing spending in specific areas such as headcount, to allow for investments in others.”
Additionally, Lightspeed’s board of directors has authorized a repurchase of up to 10 percent of the company’s public shares, the maximum allowed under Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) rules. The repurchase is an approximate investment of $140 million, CFO Asha Bakshani said in a statement, and allows Lightspeed to create shareholder value while reducing dilution from employee equity grants.
Lightspeed expects to complete the majority of its restructuring plan within its first fiscal quarter of 2025, which began this week, and reaffirmed the revenue and Adjusted EBITDA outlooks it outlined in its Q3 earnings.
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Lightspeed share value jumped from $18.86 per share on market close Tuesday to $19.98 per share on Wednesday at 12:00 pm, a nearly six percent increase. Lightspeed stock made a similar leap last Monday when Dasilva publicly pondered the idea of taking Lightspeed private, saying reports of Nuvei’s potential buyout, which has since become official, “makes you think.”
Founded in 2005, Lightspeed provides commerce and point-of-sale software to restaurants, retailers, and hospitality providers. The company’s shares have plummeted almost 85 percent as part of the broader tech downturn following the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2021 drop was partially propelled by a report released by activist short-seller Spruce Point Capital Management, which was critical of Lightspeed’s metrics, including its customer count and gross transaction volume.
In its Q3 earnings, Lightspeed vowed to focus on growing top-line revenue without sacrificing the progress it has made in becoming EBITDA positive as the company aims to strike the right balance between revenue growth and profitability. When Dasilva took over, he indicated that “profitable growth” remains the goal and warned the company may cut more costs in the near term as it considers “different opportunities for unlocking operational efficiencies.”
Lightspeed said it will provide an update on its Q4 financial performance in May 2024, where it will also line out its fiscal 2025 strategic plan and management’s approach to the share repurchase program.
Feature image courtesy Lightspeed.
