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LSPD, LIGHTSPEED COMMERCE INC.

Software asset-light Unprofitable

Lightspeed's technology and insights makes work flow across teams, channels and locations to help accelerate growth and provide the best customer experience.

OF LIGHTSPEED Mission Lightspeed is the unified POS and payments platform empowering the businesses at the heart of communities in over 100 countries.

Our fast, flexible omni-channel technology combines advanced point of sale and ecommerce solutions with embedded payments, inventory management, real-time reporting, staff and supplier management, a wholesale network, financial services and more.

Latest annual: FY2025 40-F · US listing is the ordinary share

LSPD · LIGHTSPEED COMMERCE INC.

The business

What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.

Revenue · FY2025

$1.1B

+18.4% YoY · 55% 5-yr CAGR

Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average

Revenue $1.1B 5-yr avg $697M

Gross margin 42% 5-yr avg 47%

Operating margin −64.6% 5-yr avg −70.8%

ROIC −50% 5-yr avg −26%

Owner-earnings margin −3% 5-yr avg −19%

Free cash flow margin −3% 5-yr avg −19%

The business in brief

read the 10-K →

What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.

What it is: Revenue is led by Transaction-based revenue (65%) and Subscription revenue (32%), with 2 more lines behind.
Situation: Unprofitable. No sustained operating profit across the record; an earnings multiple has nothing to rest on. What the record does show is revenue, the gross-margin trajectory, and the burn against the cash on hand.
What moves the needle: Operating margin has run around −59% through the cycle on a 45% gross margin, the operating line in the red even at its best — so the lever is whether the spending below the gross line can come down enough to clear a profit: revenue growth against the cost curve, and the cash runway until it does. The cash cycle has run negative through the cycle (a median of −63 days): the operation is paid before it pays, so working capital releases cash as the business grows rather than tying it up. Read this kind of business on retention and the cost of growth. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on pricing power & competition, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
Is it a good business?: Return on capital has rarely cleared the cost of capital (median −19%, above 15% in 0 of 6 years). Owner earnings, the cash-based check, have been thin too. This is price-taker territory, where the balance sheet and the cycle matter more than any multiple; the rest is in the 10-K.

Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.

Where the money comes from

read the 20-F →

Transaction-based revenue is 65% of revenue, with Subscription revenue the other meaningful line at 32%.

Revenue by product line, FY2025

Transaction-based revenue65%$697M
Subscription revenue32%$345M
Merchant cash advances3%$35M
Hardware and other revenue3%$35M

By geographyUnited States64%Other14%Canada8%Australia8%United Kingdom6%

From the segment footnote of the company's own 20-F. Shares are of total revenue; the profit bar shows each segment's share of segment operating profit, before unallocated corporate costs.

The record

Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.

The record, 2020–2025

realized figures from each filing · older years to the left

2020’20	2021’21	2022’22	2023’23	2024’24	2025’25	TTMTTMMar 2025
							Income statement
$121M	$222M	$548M	$731M	$909M	$1.1B	$1.1B	RevenueRevenue
67%	58%	49%	45%	42%	42%	42%	Gross marginGross mgn
($58M)	($130M)	($318M)	($1.1B)	($203M)	($696M)	($696M)	Operating incomeOp. inc.
−48.4%	−58.5%	−58.1%	−150.4%	−22.3%	−64.6%	−64.6%	Operating marginOp. mgn
($54M)	($124M)	($288M)	($1.1B)	($164M)	($667M)	($667M)	Net incomeNet inc.
							Cash flow & returns
($29M)	($93M)	($87M)	($125M)	($98M)	($33M)	($33M)	Operating cash flowOp. cash
$4M	$6M	$13M	$14M	$15M	$13M	$13M	DepreciationDeprec.
$21M	$25M	$188M	$931M	$52M	$622M	$622M	Working capital & otherWC & other
$4M	$2M	$11M	$9M	$8M	$4M	$4M	CapexCapex
3.0%	0.8%	1.9%	1.3%	0.8%	0.4%	0.4%	Capex / revenueCapex/rev
($32M)	($95M)	($98M)	($135M)	($105M)	($37M)	($37M)	Owner earningsOwner earn.
−26.7%	−42.8%	−17.8%	−18.4%	−11.6%	−3.4%	−3.4%	Owner earnings marginOE mgn
($32M)	($95M)	($98M)	($135M)	($105M)	($37M)	($37M)	Free cash flowFCF
−26.7%	−42.8%	−17.8%	−18.4%	−11.6%	−3.4%	−3.4%	Free cash flow marginFCF mgn
-28%	-9%	-10%	-51%	-9%	-50%	-50%	ROICROIC
-16%	-6%	-8%	-43%	-7%	-40%	-40%	Return on equityROE
−16%	−6%	−8%	−43%	−7%	−40%	−40%	Retained to equityRetained/eq
							Balance sheet
$211M	$807M	$954M	$800M	$722M	$558M	$558M	Cash & investmentsCash+inv
$11M	$25M	$46M	$55M	$62M	$53M	$53M	ReceivablesReceiv.
$932K	$2M	$8M	$13M	$16M	$15M	$15M	InventoryInvent.
$31M	$65M	$78M	$69M	$69M	$73M	$73M	Accounts payablePayables
($19M)	($39M)	($25M)	($1M)	$10M	($5M)	($5M)	Operating working capitalOper. WC
$233M	$858M	$1.0B	$934M	$918M	$798M	$798M	Current assetsCur. assets
$71M	$113M	$158M	$150M	$145M	$149M	$149M	Current liabilitiesCur. liab.
3.3×	7.6×	6.6×	6.2×	6.3×	5.4×	5.4×	Current ratioCurr. ratio
$147M	$972M	$2.1B	$1.4B	$1.3B	$798M	$798M	GoodwillGoodwill
$478M	$2.1B	$3.6B	$2.7B	$2.6B	$1.8B	$1.8B	Total assetsAssets
$30M	$30M	$30M	$0	—	—	$0	Total debtDebt
($181M)	($777M)	($924M)	($800M)	—	—	($558M)	Net debt / (cash)Net debt
-32.3×	-44.8×	-111.0×	-535.1×	-142.2×	-470.0×	-470.0×	Interest coverageInt. cov.
$344M	$1.9B	$3.4B	$2.5B	$2.4B	$1.7B	$1.7B	Shareholders’ equityEquity
							Per share
85.9M	105M	142M	150M	154M	154M	154M	Shares out (diluted)Shares
$1.40	$2.11	$3.87	$4.86	$5.91	$7.01	$7.01	Revenue / shareRev/sh
$-0.62	$-1.18	$-2.04	$-7.11	$-1.07	$-4.34	$-4.34	EPS (diluted)EPS
$-0.37	$-0.90	$-0.69	$-0.89	$-0.68	$-0.24	$-0.24	Owner earnings / shareOE/sh
$-0.37	$-0.90	$-0.69	$-0.89	$-0.68	$-0.24	$-0.24	Free cash flow / shareFCF/sh
$0.04	$0.02	$0.08	$0.06	$0.05	$0.02	$0.02	Cap. spending / shareCapex/sh
$4.01	$18.38	$24.01	$16.60	$15.69	$10.83	$10.83	Book value / shareBVPS

Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded

	5-yr	5-yr
Revenue / share	+37.9%/yr	+37.9%/yr
Capital spending / share	−10.2%/yr	−10.2%/yr
Book value / share	+22.0%/yr	+22.0%/yr

The record, charted

FY2020–2025

Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.

Share count

154Mpeak FY2024

ROIC

−50%low FY2023

Gross margin

42%low FY2025

Owner earnings vs. net income

Owner earningsNet income

The accountant's number, and the cash an owner can take; the gap is the tell.

($37M)owner earningsvs.($667M)net incomelow FY2023

Owner-earnings bridge

FY2021–FY2025cash-flow statement, SEC EDGAR →

Net income is the accountant's number; owner earnings is the cash an owner could take out. The walk between them, off the cash-flow statement, and whether the gap is widening or holding.

In fiscal 2025 the business turned a $667M loss into ($37M) of owner earnings: more cash than the profit line showed, after the non-cash charges and the capital it put back in.

	FY2025	FY2024	FY2023	FY2022	FY2021
Reported net income	($667M)	($164M)	($1.1B)	($288M)	($124M)
Depreciation & amortizationnon-cash charge added back	+$13M	+$15M	+$14M	+$13M	+$6M
Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items	+$622M	+$52M	+$931M	+$188M	+$25M
Cash from operations	($33M)	($98M)	($125M)	($87M)	($93M)
Capital expenditurecash put back in to keep running and to grow	−$4M	−$8M	−$9M	−$11M	−$2M
Owner earnings	($37M)	($105M)	($135M)	($98M)	($95M)
Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue	-3%	-12%	-18%	-18%	-43%

Owner earnings is the cash an owner could pull out without starving the business: operating cash less the capital it must spend to hold its position .

Maintenance capex is estimated as depreciation where a growing business invests above it; free cash flow is the figure the scorecard's free-cash margin reads.

III

Quality & stewardship

Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.

Owner’s Scorecard

FY2025 40-F · source on SEC EDGAR →

Will it survive?

Can it pay its interest? -470.0×

Does not cover its interest

Operating income ($696M) ÷ interest expense $1M

What this means
A full year of operating profit didn't cover the interest bill. This is the zombie zone: the business depends on refinancing, asset sales, or forbearance to service its debt.
How heavy is the debt, net of cash? +$558M

Net cash, debt-free

Cash $558M − debt $0

What this means
Cash and short-term investments exceed every dollar of debt by $558M, on net the company owes nothing, and can act from strength when others can't. Net debt is the leverage figure that matters: the cash is already set against the debt. Strategic or illiquid investments aren't counted here.
How long is cash tied up? -16d

Negative, funded by others

DSO 18 + DIO 9 − DPO 43 days

What this means
Days cash is tied up between paying suppliers and collecting from customers. A negative cycle is a quiet moat: suppliers and customers fund the operation (Buffett's “float”), the company grows on other people's money.

Is it a good business?

Return on invested capital -28%

Below average through the cycle

6-yr median, range -51%–-9%; -50% latest = NOPAT ($550M) ÷ invested capital $1.1B

Industry peers: median -4%

What this means
The rate the business earns on the money tied up in it, Buffett's north star, because over time a stock tracks the ROIC beneath it. Above ~15% sustained hints at a moat; a return below the cost of capital (~8%) erodes value as a business grows rather than building it — the test Buffett weighs most. The headline is the median of the last 6 years (it ran -50% most recently), so one peak or trough year doesn't set the verdict. Asset-light businesses (R&D expensed, little capital) read artificially high, pair this with Owner Earnings.
Owner-earnings margin -18%

Consumes cash through the cycle

6-yr median margin, range -43%–-3%; latest ($37M) = operating cash ($33M) − maintenance capex $4M

Industry peers: median 20%

What this means
What an owner could take out without starving the business: operating cash less the maintenance capital it must spend to hold its position — Buffett's owner earnings. That's -3% of revenue this year, a -18% median across 6 years.
Are earnings backed by cash? ($33M)

Loss, and burning cash

Net income ($667M) · cash from operations ($33M)

What this means
The company reported a net loss, so a conversion ratio isn't meaningful. What matters then is whether operations still threw off cash, here, they did not.

How is the cash used?

Where do the earnings go? —

No surplus to allocate

What this means
The business didn't generate positive Owner Earnings this year, so any distributions came from the balance sheet or borrowing, not from operations.
Investing or harvesting? 0.30×

Harvesting

Capex $4M ÷ depreciation $13M

What this means
Descriptive, not a grade. Above ~1× means investing faster than assets wear out (growth, or, sustained for years, today's earnings carrying less depreciation than tomorrow's will). Below means spending less than it's wearing out (efficiency, or a melting asset base). The ratio won't tell you which; the filings will.

Graham’s defensive tests · 2 of 5 met

Graham’s numerical criteria for the defensive investor (The Intelligent Investor, ch. 14), run on the filings. A floor of safety, not a buy signal; many fine modern businesses fail his strictest liquidity rules by design.

Adequate size Near

Revenue ≥ $2B · $1.1B

What this means
Big enough to weather a storm. Graham's 1972 floor was ~$100M of sales (≈ $700M today); we use a $2B revenue line as a conservative modern stand-in.
Strong liquidity Pass

Current ratio ≥ 2× · 5.36×

What this means
Current assets at least twice current liabilities, near-term bills covered without touching the business. Strict by design: many cash-rich modern firms run leaner and miss it, holding their cushion in longer-dated securities.
Conservative debt Pass

Debt ≤ working capital · $0 vs $649M WC

What this means
Graham's rule that borrowings not exceed net current assets. Capital-heavy and buyback-heavy firms routinely fail it, read it next to interest coverage, not alone.
Earnings stability Miss

A profit every year (6-yr record) · 6 loss years

What this means
Graham wanted earnings in each of the past ten years, the stability a defensive owner leans on.
Dividend record Miss

Uninterrupted dividends · none paid

What this means
An unbroken dividend was Graham's mark of durability. He wanted twenty years; the filings show about ten, and a single suspension breaks the streak. Non-payers, many fine modern compounders, fall outside his defensive net by design.
Earnings growth —

Earnings +33% over the record · —

What this means
Earnings were negative early in the record, a growth rate isn't meaningful.
Moderate price —

P/E ≤ 15 and P/E × P/B ≤ 22.5 · decided by the price

What this means
Graham's valuation gate, the wall he kept between a sound business and a sound investment. Three-year average earnings are $-4.33/share (latest year $-4.56), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is $11.37/share. Enter a price in “What the price implies” just below for the P/E, P/B, and whether it clears. But this is the rule Buffett outgrew: there's no hard P/E law, and a wonderful business can deserve a far richer multiple if the thesis holds, treat it as the bargain-hunter's floor, not a verdict on the price.

Durability & moat, 2020–2025

Whether the record’s returns held, and what the capital reinvested earned.

Profitable years 0 of 6

What this means
Lost money in 6 year(s), look at what happened there before trusting the average.
Return on capital ≥ 15% 0 of 4 yrs

What this means
A moat shows up as a high return on invested capital that holds year after year, not one good vintage.
Operating margin −55% → −79% (3-yr avg ends)

In the filing’s words The words explain the slip: the filing names price competition rather than pricing actions of its own — a business that looks to take its price, not set it.

What this means
Through the cycle the operating margin slipped — about −55% early to −79% lately, median −59% — competition or costs are biting in.
Reinvestment, incremental ROIC —

What this means
The reinvested base moved too little against the change in profit to read a reliable return on it here — the figure would be a small-denominator artifact, not a moat. Judge this one on the owner-earnings record and the cash it returns instead.
Worst year 2023 · −150.4% op. margin

What this means
Operations went underwater in 2023, understand why before trusting the good years.
Share count +12.3%/yr

What this means
The share count is rising, dilution works against you on a per-share basis.

Does AI threaten the moat?

Elevated contestability

The product is software or information, the very thing capable AI now produces more cheaply, so the moat is more contestable than the record alone implies.

In its own filing Framed as a capability

Despite the structural exposure, the filing positions AI as something it uses, not a threat to its product.

“In Fiscal 2026, we launched Lightspeed AI, introducing a new AI-powered intelligence layer across Lightspeed Retail, Lightspeed Restaurant and NuORDER by Lightspeed to help merchants access insights faster, simplify decision-making, and operate more efficiently.”

AI has collapsed the cost of building a capable substitute for the very thing this business sells. When a credible alternative can be assembled for a fraction of the incumbent's price, it is pricing power that erodes first, not revenue tomorrow. The live question is whether the moat survives that, not whether it held in the past. Whether that question is answerable at all is yours to decide, against your own circle of competence.

Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.

All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.

Current Position

as of fiscal year-end, Mar 31, 2025

Can the business pay what it owes this year, off the freshest balance sheet: the quality of the assets, the debt actually coming due, and what a low ratio means here.

Current assets$798M

Cash & short-term investments$558M
Receivables$53M
Inventory$15M
Other current assets$172M

Current liabilities$149M

Accounts payable$73M
Other current liabilities$76M

Current ratio5.36×all current assets ÷ what's due · Graham looked for 2×

Quick ratio5.26×stricter: inventory excluded

Cash ratio3.75×strictest: cash alone against what's due

Working capital$649Mthe cushion left after near-term bills

Cash runway15.3 yrsthe business is consuming cash; this is how long the cash on hand lasts at that rate

Deeper floors

Tangible book value$706Mequity stripped of goodwill & intangibles

Net current asset value$636MGraham's net-net: current assets less all liabilities

Deferred revenue$69Mcustomer cash collected before delivery; operating float

From the company's latest filing.

Acquisitions & goodwill

from the balance sheet & the 6-year cash-flow record

Goodwill grows only when a company acquires and falls only when it concedes it overpaid. The size of that bet, the cash put into buying rather than building, and how much has already been written off.

Goodwill & intangibles$958M52% of all assets; the premium carried on the balance sheet for businesses acquired

Against book equity48%goodwill is this share of book equity; the rest is the company’s own retained and paid-in capital

Cash spent acquiring$0over 6 years buying other businesses, against $37M of capital spent building

None written down over the record; the goodwill is still carried at full cost. That is the deals holding their value on the books so far; whether they keep doing so is the test an owner watches, since the write-down, when it comes, is the admission the price was too high.

Goodwill, acquired intangibles and equity from the latest balance sheet; acquisition spend and write-downs summed across the 6-year record, from the company's own filings.

Inverting the record

Invert: instead of why LIGHTSPEED COMMERCE INC. is a good business, the question is what would make owning it a mistake, and whether those marks are in the record. Disconfirming tests across 2020–2025.

None of the 3 tests turned up a mark; each came back clean. A clean panel says only that these particular ways of being wrong are not written into the record.

Each test came back clean

Is it less profitable than it was?
Did debt outgrow the business?
Did receivables and inventory outpace sales?

Each test is read from the filings and is noisy alone; a flag can mark a cyclical trough or a year of heavy investment as easily as a problem. The filing says which.

What an owner would ask, FY2026

read the 10-K →

Which reported numbers are a judgment call?
Management names Income taxes, Stock compensation as critical estimates
each rests partly on management's judgment; the filing's note sets out the assumptionsverify →

The questions the record and the charts do not answer on their own; each carries the figure and the place to look.

Peers, Software

The same industry, side by side on owner economics. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.

Company	Revenue	Gross margin	Op. margin	ROIC	Owner earn. margin
CFLTConfluent Inc.	$1.2B	68%	-65.5%	-24%	-28%
BLKBBlackbaud Inc.	$1.1B	54%	4.1%	3%	20%
MANHManhattan Associates	$1.1B	55%	23.3%	214%	25%
LSPDLIGHTSPEED COMMERCE INC.	$1.1B	47%	-58.3%	-19%	-18%
SAILSailPoint Inc.	$1.1B	64%	-28.7%	-4%	-13%
FIGFigma Inc.	$1.1B	88%	-117.1%	-92%	23%
DUOLDuolingo Inc.	$1.0B	73%	-6.2%	44%	21%
SSentinelOne	$1.0B	66%	-95.4%	-20%	-47%
Group median	—	65%	-43.5%	-11%	4%

The price

What a price has to assume.

What the price implies

reverse-DCF

Enter the US price, in dollars: the NYSE/Nasdaq quote you hold. LIGHTSPEED COMMERCE INC.'s US listing is the ordinary share itself. The record tables elsewhere on this page remain as filed.

LIGHTSPEED COMMERCE INC. is profitable, but owner earnings are negative this year because capital spending currently outruns operating cash, a build-out, so the owner-earnings reverse-DCF has no positive base to grow. We read the price from both ends instead: type a price to see the steady-state profitability it demands, then set the mature margin you would believe and weigh the two against each other. Nothing leaves your browser unless you enter it in your notebook.

Today’s price $

The assumptions Required return 9% Years to get there 10 Revenue growth 0%

Revenue, delivered56%/yr’20→’25

Mature owner-earnings margin 15%

Enter a price to run it.

Owner earnings it must reach—

Margin the price demands—

Owner-earnings margin today−3%

Two reads of one future. From your price: the owner earnings the company must reach, valued at a mature multiple and discounted back at your rate, expressed as the margin it implies on revenue grown at your rate. From your belief: the mature margin you would credit, set on the dial above. When the margin the price demands runs above the one you would believe, you are paying for a future taken on faith. For a deep cyclical at a trough, normalized through-cycle earnings are the better lens; this mode is for the genuinely unprofitable, and for the profitable business whose capital spending currently outruns its cash.

Weigh LSPD against another business →

Cite: Owner Scorecard, "LIGHTSPEED COMMERCE INC. (LSPD), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/LSPD, data as of 2026-07-09.

Manual order: ← LSE its page in the Manual LTM →

Industry order: ← LGCL the Software chapter MANH →