The chief executive of Lightspeed POS Inc., which made its debut on the Toronto Stock Exchange Friday, says the Montreal-based software firm has massive opportunity, but it’s not "growth at all costs" for the company.
Dax Dasilva, founder and CEO of Lightspeed, told BNN Bloomberg on Friday that the retail and restaurant software provider is run in a very balanced way to make sure the company is on its path to profitability.
“We’re growing, because the opportunity is massive. There are 47 million potential customers for Lightspeed in small and medium-size businesses. We’re at 47,000 customers,” Dasilva said.
“We want to capture as much of this as fast as we can, but it’s not growth at all costs.”
Dasilva added the 14-year-old company really watches the manner in which it invests, and is very sensitive to the cost of acquiring a customer, and the lifetime value of a customer.
“There are some losses that are reported that have to do with redeemable shares that go away once we go public,” Dasilva said. “In terms of free cash flow, that’s sort of the number that we really look at. If you look at year upon year, we’re in pretty good shape.”
Dasilva’s comments come after Lightspeed made its TSX debut after raising $240 million in the biggest initial public offering by a Canadian technology company in nearly nine years.
Shares jumped as much as $20.22 in morning trading. That’s more than 26 per cent higher than its IPO price of $16.
There’s been a lot of hype surrounding Lightspeed – which provides businesses with cloud-based software to manage operations, and handle payments – leading up to its listing, along with comparisons to Ottawa-based e-commerce giant Shopify Inc. that raised $131 million in its IPO in 2015.
Dasilva was quick to point out that Lightspeed is in a different segment than Shopify, but said the company is on a similar path to build value for investors.
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