Lightspeed POS (TSX:LSPD) is a Montreal based company that helps small and medium sized businesses in roughly 100 countries around the world. It is a one-stop-shop for businesses such as restaurants and retailers providing its cloud based platform to manage their day to day operations, engage with their clientele, process payments, and grow their business.
The Canadian stock went public in March and has since doubled in value. A recent pull-back in share price could be an opportunity for investors to enter at a more agreeable value for the time being. Despite the company trading at nearly double its 52-week low, the company and analysts are optimistic.
POS or “point-of-sale” programs once offered a handy way to process payments and keep track of orders and so on within the running day of a business.
The rise in cloud based technologies and the need to consolidate operational data for small businesses has allowed POS companies to adapt and innovate. They have created better platforms that include nearly every metric that a person needs to run their business more user-friendly and with faster sales.
Lightspeed has done just that with the release of their new model “Lightspeed Retail 3.0”. Lightspeed has functions that other POS programs do not. Such as supply chain management, clientele data, store comparisons, and more. They now add functions such as “Profile, Sales History, and Retail Manager” allowing managers to view operational settings, generate live reports themselves, and be more in control of growing their business.
This moves Lightspeed POS into new territory as they grow to be much more than just a POS platform. There is market share to be had within the operational data analytics realm that they have entered.
The company traded at roughly $49 per share in early August but has since fallen about 30%Â to the low 30’s, $32.92 at writing.
Sales for the company are estimated to rise from $57 million in the companies fiscal 2018 to roughly $244 million in 2022.
The company expects to increase their bottom line by 94.2% in 2020 and 47% in 2021, so despite the big jump post IPO, it appears that Lightspeed intends to follow up and make some big moves in creating a larger market share for themselves in the POS and small business management market. If you’re new to buying stocks and not aware of what the bottom line is, it is simply the earnings of the company.
Keep in mind however that key acquisitions do have the potential to inevitably fall through, like Transat’s recent deal, and this can cause share prices to plummet.