What happened

Shares of Lightspeed Commerce (LSPD -0.46%) were tumbling Thursday after investors seemed underwhelmed by the guidance that accompanied the SaaS company's fiscal 2022 second-quarter report.

As of 3:22 p.m. EDT, the stock was down by 28.7%.

A credit card over a POS machine

Image source: Getty Images.

So what

Lightspeed, which provides a range of cloud services including payments solutions for small and medium-sized consumer businesses, posted blowout growth in its fiscal Q2, which ended Sept. 30. Revenue was up 193% on a year-over-year basis to $133.2 million. About half of that revenue came from new business acquisitions, while organic revenue in its core segments -- subscriptions and transcriptions -- grew 58%.

The high-growth company seemed to benefit in part from a pandemic recovery; transaction-based revenue was up 320% to $65 million, and its gross transaction volume rose to $18.8 billion. The number of its customer locations is now 156,000. 

On the bottom line, the company's adjusted EBITDA loss expanded from $2.8 million in the prior-year period to $8.7 million, though its margin was similar. On an adjusted basis, it reported a loss of $0.08 per share, exceeding its loss of $0.05 per share in the year-ago quarter, though it beat estimates by $0.01 per share.

"Lightspeed's powerful commerce platform has helped our customers to not only survive the worst of the pandemic but thrive in the recovery," said CEO Dax Dasilva. "With the addition of Ecwid and NuORDER, Lightspeed will continue to deploy revolutionary technology that will allow our customers to meet the future with greater insights, control and confidence than they have ever had in the past."

Now what

What seemed to cool off the high-flying stock was the company's guidance for the rest of the fiscal year, which indicates that its revenue growth has been primarily driven by acquisitions, and that those tailwinds are fading. 

The company is calling for revenue in the $140 million to $145 million for its fiscal 2022 third quarter. That would amount to about 7% sequential revenue growth. For its full fiscal year, it's guiding for revenue of $520 million to $535 million, which implies that it foresees no sequential growth in its fiscal Q4.

While the company's organic growth has been impressive -- justifying the parallels some have drawn between Lightspeed and Shopify -- there are some legitimate questions about this serial acquirer's valuation given its slowing growth.