Czech duo Bárta and Šenkypl build 5% stake in Lightspeed

The Czech investment group Pale Fire Capital, backed by Jan Bárta and Dušan Šenkypl, has increased its stake in the Canadian company Lightspeed Commerce to 5.1%. Lightspeed supplies point-of-sale systems and payment services to shops, restaurants and golf clubs in more than a hundred countries, and the Czechs' stake is valued at roughly 1.4 billion crowns.

According to the latest filing, the Pale Fire Capital fund holds 6,654,851 Lightspeed shares. The five-percent threshold was crossed on 24 September — a day before the group's stake in the education platform Coursera passed ten percent. The Czechs started buying Lightspeed shares this year and gradually built up their position, according to CzechCrunch's estimate, at roughly the current price of around ten dollars a share, meaning the investment is so far breaking even.

As with Coursera, this is a passive filing: Pale Fire Capital stresses that it is not seeking control of the company. That sets this deal apart from some of the group's other investments — for instance, in Phreesie, Ziff Davis and Cars.com the Czechs filed activist stakes this year, while at Groupon they earlier took over management outright.

Shares of Montreal-based Lightspeed, which trade simultaneously in Toronto and New York, are down roughly 18% since the start of the year. At the same time, the company posted second-quarter revenue of 322.7 million dollars (about 7 billion crowns) with 17% organic growth, beating its own guidance. A cash reserve of 372 million dollars (8.1 billion crowns) amounts to about 30% of the company's market value — in that same quarter Lightspeed bought back and retired almost seven million of its own shares, and the board approved a further buyback of up to ten percent of shares in free float.