Why Lightspeed Commerce Stock Rose 8% Last Week

What happened?

The shares of Lightspeed Commerce (TSX: LSPD)(NYSE: LSPD) surged by 8% last week to $39.08 per share on the TSX, posting its biggest weekly gains in the last eight weeks. Meanwhile, the TSX Composite Index turned slightly negative and fell by 53 points in the week ended on April 1. With this, LSPD stock has risen by nearly 37% in the last 20 sessions. But it still trades with 24% year-to-date losses.

So what?

On March 24, Lightspeed announced the following key changes in its top leadership:

• It appointed Brandon Nussey as its chief operating officer (COO) to look after the company’s operating effectiveness. Before his appointment to this newly created role, Brandon served LSPD as its chief financial officer (CFO) for about four years.
• Lightspeed promoted Asha Bakshani, who has over 15 years of experience as a finance leader in the technology and media industry, to be its new CFO.
• The company also has hired Rani Hammond as its new chief people officer to add value to its human resources team. Before joining Lightspeed, she has served the Australian healthcare services firm GenesisCare as its chief people & culture officer.

In its press release, the company justified creating a new COO role and other leadership changes “to best align its people and organization for the next phase of company growth,” highlighting its dramatic growth in recent years. However, these announcements initially failed to take LSPD stock higher, as new updates related to the Russia-Ukraine war kept most tech stocks highly volatile and without any clear direction.

Nonetheless, as investors’ high hopes from Russia-Ukraine negotiations turned the tech sector slightly positive last week, Lightspeed stock led the rally. That’s one of the reasons why Lightspeed stock outperformed its home market peers like Shopify and Nuvei last week, as they rose by 2.3% and 6.3%, respectively.

Now what?

The ongoing geopolitical tensions and concerns about inflationary pressures are keeping the broader market — especially the tech sector — highly volatile. But these temporary factors might not have a major impact on Canadian tech companies’ long-term growth outlook. That’s why I consider it to be the right time for long-term investors to consider buying high-growth tech stocks like Lightspeed right now.