Lightspeed is a model of growth by acquisition, while Shopify until recently relied more on internal, or organic, growth. It also has only eight per cent as many merchant clients, at 140,000. ![]() With 2020 revenues of $293 million, Lightspeed has just eight per cent of the sales volume of Shopify. For all its success in raising equity capital, Lightspeed is unlikely ever to achieve the ability to outmuscle Shopify. They seem to be missing the point, though. A spate of analysts’ reports now raise the question of which company’s stock is the better buy. Montreal-based Lightspeed has been so aggressive in diversifying its client services that Jean Paul Chauvet, Lightspeed’s president, allowed in a June conference call with analysts that “You could say that we have an offering now that is getting us closer to Shopify.”Ĭhauvet’s comment reflects the mood on the Street, which anticipates a market-share contest between Lightspeed and Shopify. Revenues at each firm almost doubled last year, and the value of Lightspeed shares has almost tripled in the past year, to a current $119, while shares of Shopify gained about 40 per cent in that period, and as of Wednesday noon traded at $1,894. ![]() The eventual pairing of Shopify and Lightspeed is such a predictable outcome that it should be a selling point for securities analysts who like both firms.īoth companies were also among the pandemic-economy winners. The dominant player in Lightspeed’s e-commerce sector is Ottawa-based Shopify, which boasts $3.6 billion in annual revenues and more than 1.7 million merchants running online stores on Shopify’s platform. Their founders cash in, using the proceeds to start over with a new business.Ī classic example is Elon Musk, who used his windfall profits from the sale of PayPal Holdings Inc. In a tradition as old as Silicon Valley, small-fry players like Lightspeed grow quickly only to be gobbled up by a bigger player.įor all their rapid growth, the takeover targets don’t have the resources to make the next big leap to major player. That might even be the unacknowledged plan of Lightspeed CEO Dax Dasilva, despite the pride he can take in being one of North America’s leading consolidators in the red-hot e-commerce sector.īut that kind of pride has its limits in the tech sector. So much so, in fact, that it risks becoming a takeover target for Shopify. is beginning to look like e-commerce giant Shopify Inc.’s Mini-Me. With its recent string of costly acquisitions, stock-market darling Lightspeed Commerce Inc.
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