This morning, Lightspeed reported its financial results for the three months and fiscal year ended March 31, 2023 (“Fiscal 2023”). For me, this reflects a strong end to a year of progress. Read the press release to learn more.
In particular, we’re pleased with our end results in a couple of areas. For the quarter, we hit a total revenue growth rate of 26%, and our gross payment volumes (“GPV”) were up by 70% YoY. Adjusted EBITDA loss came in significantly better than expected.
What’s more, our Customer Locations in the quarter processing more than $500,000/year in GTV grew by 13% YoY; and those processing more than $1 million/year2 in GTV grew by 16%. This, coupled with the retention rate we have with our customers tells me that customers aren’t just staying with us, they’re growing with us. And as they scale, they’re expanding their tech suite and investing more in our platforms to keep building on that momentum. This is further confirmation that we’re on the right track in our efforts to welcome more established, sophisticated retailers and restaurateurs to the Lightspeed family.
As we enter the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024 (“Fiscal 2024”), let me dig in to how we see the year unfolding. Over the past four years, we’ve laid the foundations for this formidable company to become the go-to global commerce platform. We called this One Lightspeed: our plan to take the best of all our acquired companies and build something better on a global scale.
I’m thrilled to share that by the end of Fiscal 2023, we accomplished this goal. We went from selling and supporting nine distinct products to leading predominantly with two flagships: Lightspeed Restaurant and Lightspeed Retail. These industry leading platforms are the best we’ve ever shipped, and our customers are experiencing their unique features that help simplify and scale their businesses.
Other major Q4 milestones include:
- Launching new features like Tap to Pay in the US for restaurants, allowing them to serve their customers better and turn tables faster.
- Going upmarket with our new Service Module, where merchants can now create, schedule, track, and sell service offerings right within Lightspeed Retail.
- Expanding Lightspeed Payments to all paid e-com stand alone customers in the US, with plans to expand into Canada in Q2.
- Launching our Lightspeed Capital offering in new geographies, including the UK and New Zealand, and making self-serve Lightspeed Capital advances available in our flagship products.
- And of course, welcoming a roster of new businesses to Lightspeed, like Eastern National, with locations that power America’s national parks, and two restaurants from the Joel Robuchon group (which maintains many Michelin star restaurants). Lightspeed also signed a four-year contract renewal for Lightspeed B2B with renowned retailer Saks Fifth Avenue.
Now, it’s time to build on this strong foundation. Fiscal 2024 is our year of execution. Here’s where our focus lies:
Capitalize on the power of our flagship products
We’re kicking off Fiscal 2024 with 70% of new customers using and the majority of our go-to-market team selling our two flagship products. We hope this focusing of resources – re-oriented from building and selling nine products to two – will give rise to higher ARPU and increased platform adoption among high GTV merchants.
Deliver innovative solutions to our customers
This focusing of resources also means we’re able to concentrate on more rapid innovation. By that, I mean continuing to build products that solve our customers’ problems and help grow their businesses — particularly with Lightspeed’s Supplier Network.
Drive significant growth in our financial services revenue
Earlier this month, we launched Unified Payments and POS. Moving forward, all customers will be asked to sign up for one cohesive and comprehensive product offering, where Lightspeed Payments is embedded directly into their POS. For new customers globally this change is immediate! For existing customers this change will roll out gradually this year. This is one of the biggest moves we’re making in Fiscal 2024, and one we know delivers value to our customers. Today, merchants like Silo & Crate, which currently uses both platforms, have shared that it saves them time and money, eliminates the need to reconcile separate systems, improves accuracy, reduces manual tasks and gives them far better data insights into their business.
But we aren’t stopping there. We’re expanding Lightspeed Capital to provide more financial services solutions to our customers. Because in a world where traditional financial institutions are pulling back and interest rates rising, this is a pain point Lightspeed is well-positioned to solve.
While we embark on Fiscal 2024, we do so with the same mission as Day One.
There’s a reason why the world’s best restaurants and retailers run their business on Lightspeed. We help ambitious entrepreneurs do what they do best: create exceptional customer experiences.
And when I look to the future, we’ll keep doing what we do best: building the tools they need to grow their business. It’s about insights. Saving time. Using data. Providing exceptional experiences through one unified Payments and POS platform.
I’m proud of our customers, and proud to play a part in their success story.
Read the full press release here.
1. Key performance indicator.Gross Payment Volume. “Gross Payment Volume” or “GPV” means the total dollar value of transactions processed, excluding amounts processed through the NuORDER solution, in the period through our payments solutions in respect of which we act as the principal in the arrangement with the customer, net of refunds, inclusive of shipping and handling, duty and value-added taxes. We use this measure as we believe that growth in our GPV demonstrates the extent to which we have scaled our payments solutions. We have excluded amounts processed through the NuORDER solution from our GPV because they represent business-to-business volume rather than business-to-consumer volume, and we do not currently have a robust payments solution for business-to-business volume. Excluding Customer Locations and GTV attributable to the Ecwid eCommerce standalone product, Lightspeed Golf and NuORDER by Lightspeed product. A Customer Location’s GTV per year is calculated by annualizing the GTV for the months in which the Customer Location is actively processing in the last twelve months.
2.Excluding Customer Locations and GTV attributable to the Ecwid eCommerce standalone product, Lightspeed Golf and NuORDER by Lightspeed product. A Customer Location’s GTV per year is calculated by annualizing the GTV for the months in which the Customer Location is actively processing in the last twelve months.
3.Key performance indicator. Gross Transaction Volume. “Gross Transaction Volume” or “GTV” means the total dollar value of transactions processed through our cloud-based software-as-a-service platform, excluding amounts processed through the NuORDER solution, in the period, net of refunds, inclusive of shipping and handling, duty and value-added taxes. We use this measure as we believe GTV is an indicator of the success of our customers and the strength of our platform. GTV does not represent revenue earned by us. We have excluded amounts processed through the NuORDER solution from our GTV because they represent business-to-business volume rather than business-to-consumer volume and we do not currently have a robust payments solution for business-to-business volume.
