TD's Report : Action List Buy Lightspeed Commerce Inc.
Recommendation: ACTION LIST BUY
Risk: HIGH
12-Month Target Price: C$80.00
12-Month Dividend (Est.): C$0.00
12-Month Total Return: 108.4%
Building up the Executive Team
Event
Lightspeed announced that Brandon Nussey has been appointed COO, Asha
Bakshani has been promoted to CFO, and Rani Hammond has been hired as Chief
People Officer.
Impact: SLIGHTLY POSITIVE
We believe these appointments will bring the company additional management
bandwidth as the company expands globally and into new products and services. Our
interactions with Mr. Nussey and Ms. Bakshani in the past have been very positive.
We believe the promotions demonstrate the pipeline of talent in the company and
ensures continuity to execute on the company's strategy.
Mr. Nussey was previously CFO of Lightspeed with a strong understanding of the
operations of the business, in our opinion. We believe his new role of COO, combined
with his experience of CFO, will drive operating improvements as the company
moves towards profitability. With increased executive oversight on operations, we
believe streamlined processes and overall higher efficiency could lead to better sales
execution.
Ms. Bakshani was previously EVP, Finance at Lightspeed. Our discussions with Ms.
Bakshani over the years have been very positive where she showed a very strong
understanding of the details in the financials and operations of the business. She
has also been involved with investor meetings, demonstrating a good understanding
of what investors are looking for, in our view. Ms. Bakshani joined Lightspeed over
seven years ago and quickly moved up the ranks as she helped the company scale
from $20mm of annual revenue. We believe her promotion will make a positive
contribution to Lightspeed's financial operations. Before joining Lightspeed, Ms.
Bakshani was SVP of Finance at Cineflix and a Sr. Manager at Deloitte, where she
helped companies prepare for IPOs. One of Ms. Bakshani's goals as CFO will be to
bring Lightspeed to profitability. She expects to achieve that within "quarters rather
than years."
Ms. Hammond joins Lightspeed from GenesisCare, where she was the Chief People
& Culture Officer. Prior to that, she was Chief People Officer at 2U and VP, HR at
Hilton Worldwide.